Checklist for the Yahoo to Bing Transition

Aug 6 2010

The momentum is finally building. It seems like ages ago that the Bing – Yahoo! search merger happened, but we are finally beginning to see the results. If you haven’t already, it’s time to start getting your accounts in order.

In this post we give you a timetable (best we can) and a short checklist of preparations you need to make. In the next couple weeks, we’ll roll out a couple more posts on organic and paid search transition issues in more detail.

Who does this affect?

Every business that depends on the Internet for visibility in its market and for sales or leads will be affected by this change. Bing will take over the Yahoo search functions, and as every Search Engine Optimizer alive knows, these two search engines do not return the same results. Your online visibility is about to change, for better or worse.

The (Tentative) Timetable

A few days ago, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, was reported in Softpedia as saying that the integration of Bing and Yahoo would be done by Christmas. This optimistic assessment is bolstered by the fact that the two search giants are already testing some results in their technical merger. A more comforting cautionary note comes from Yahoo, which recognizes that “the holiday season is important to you,” and that they may defer their goal of final transition to Bing to after the first of the year “if we believe that it will improve the overall experience” (i.e., keep the ad money rolling in).

So what do we know for sure?

The transition on paid search is obviously a bit uncertain, but there’s agreement in both camps that the organic search results will be supplied by Bing by the end of August or in September. Web marketers like EZlocal were already seeing Bing-driven results in tests in late July, so this piece of the transition seems to be on course.

The Natural Search Transition

To get ready for the natural search transition, you need to optimize your website for Bing, and that includes most of the things you are already doing for Google. The natural search results after the merger for both Yahoo and Bing will mirror Bing, so take a look at your results in the two search engines and see your future. If it’s not a nice picture, get to work.

Register your site at Bing’s webmaster tools to begin to get information on how the MSNbot/Bingbot sees your site. There’s nothing revolutionary in Bing’s guidelines to webmasters, but you should be watching this information for anything specific to Bing.
Take this opportunity to go back through your site and upgrade your SEO on-page content and setup. This is something you should always be doing anyway, but now’s a perfect time.

Paid Search Transition

It’s a good thing the paid search is a little more distant (though we don’t know exactly how much) because there’s more to do. Now is the time to either set up an adCenter account or link your Yahoo SearchMarketing account to one you already have. There are some specific things to do in the near future.

Beginning sometime this month (about mid-month some say), Yahoo will feature a tab in its Searchmarketing accounts that will take you to adCenter to set up or link an account. Look for it and get started.
The editorial and privacy policies going forward will be Bing’s, so review their guidelines and make changes accordingly.
The merged Pay Per Click platform will follow Bing’s formatting policies – say goodbye to those relatively long Yahoo ad contents.
Your Yahoo Searchmarketing history will NOT be ported over to Bing. 13 months of it will continue to be visible on the Yahoo site.
Budgeting will follow Bing policies, including raising the minimum cost per click from one cent to $0.05.

The Impacts of the Merger

The small picture for each of us is that the Bing takeover will shake up our natural search rankings, one way or the other. Longer term, watch for changes in pricing as the larger, merged search operation engages Google competitively. Recently, the combined Yahoo + Bing share of search touched a bit over 31% in the U.S. compared with Google’s 62% (down a bit). That’s big enough that search marketers really cannot avoid optimizing for and advertising on Bing any longer, if they haven’t already started doing so. Bing is getting bigger.