Hello, I'm Dan Thies. I've been writing about, teaching, and practicing search engine optimization for over 12 years.
In spite of what you may have heard, SEO is very simple. If you don't believe that, then you really need to read my book! It's only 100 pages long, and it's free.
How The MS/Bing/Yahoo Deal Changes SEO
How The MS/Bing/Yahoo Deal Changes SEO:
It doesn't.
I mean, once they get it all done, there will be:
- One less spider crawling the web, reducing power and bandwidth needs of the web, and helping to combat global climate change. Not sure how much carbon the Yahoo bots were putting into the air, but it's probably more than all the gas-guzzling Hummers in service today.
- One less place for the rank checkers to check their rankings. Not that this will stop anyone – you will still check your rankings at Yahoo and MSN and Live and Bing, just like you still check them at AOL and Google. Stop checking so much – it's good for the environment.
- Plenty of laid-off or otherwise severed search engineers and the like, so that every big SEO firm can hire one, and pretend that they now have some special insight into Google. If they work from home, that's one less Hummer cranking out carbon on the Bayshore Freeway. Not that it matters once it gets repossessed.
So, although your SEO action item list is zero, at least Microsoft and Yahoo are doing their part to combat global climate change.
Now, you can do your part. No more "how this deal changes SEO" posts are needed. Save the electrons – who knows when we will need them.
We'll talk more soon.
PS – the rest of the stuff for my video studio arrives today. LLTV is coming soon.
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Comments on How The MS/Bing/Yahoo Deal Changes SEO
Good one Dan… there are repercussions. Product feeds which are a big part of Y!stores traffic source. Good for me I have a client I been begging to get off Y!store. Disa did a post on the affect on the old Inktomi Inclusion programs. Big picture no big deal but there are likely a few people with lots of questions. Of course one has to wonder what the affected are doing on these pre-millenium technologies?
I don't really think that it will change much. I don't even use google for search because it is a better search engine. I just avoid yahoo and MSN because I get so distracted on their home page. I sometimes forget what I came to search for. Yahoo always has so many interesting news feeds right up there by their search bar. Oh another thing good about this new relationship is that it will open the doors for many internet marketers to write new e-books on how to expose the MS/Bing/Yahoo loophole or something like that. I always look forward to those strategies.
I agree. I don't see this changing anything at all about SEO. I was pretty happy when I read the news today though as my rankings in Bing are better than my rankings in Yahoo. I've seriously been nothing but confused by my Yahoo rankings ever since day one. Google… makes sense. Bing… who cares I rank well… Yahoo… makes no sense at all. By the way… where'd ya get the "tweet/retweet" widget? That's cool.
"Backtype Tweetcount" is the plugin, Jay.
@Terry – paid inclusion had pretty much devolved down to a shopping feed anyway, but that's significant especially for Y!store owners… the Y!store thing itself is up for sale too.
Unfortunately we are probably 2 years away from them starting to have an effect on the climate.
It is up for sale? Thanks Dan that's good to keep in mind. I posted on my blog yesterday I thought that would be the next step because the feeds are where the traffic was coming from. I have a client with "some" Y! stores… Amazon IMO, benefits from the store sale. Though I'd think some of the social shopping sites would benefit as well.
"One less spider crawling the web" — I like this and agree with you. Will the newly announced deal between giants Microsoft and Yahoo be a good thing to them and bad to Google? Got to wait and see. I was just curious to know all the past negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo so collected all the articles and links (more than 200) related to the current merger and the previous events or negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo. If you are interested check the link below. http://markthispage.blogspot.com/2009/07/saga-of-microsoft-and-yahoo-from-2007.html
I love it when an intricate, fiendish plan comes together! Here is the She-CEO of Yahoo (Carol Bats) and myself signing the final agreement to give Microsoft control over the entire backend for Yahoo’s entire search! Yahoo will handle ads, marketing, hosting and all that kinda' crap, but we will be the ones in charge of the main product, SEARCH! I was so happy as I was signing this that I almost … well, I was happy! The She-CEO tried to put a good spin on Yahoo's surrender, she said, "We never really liked search anyways! We are letting these people handle that stuff while we pursue the cool stuff ya'know!" Miss Bats, have you ever heard of a Puppet master? Oh well, it has been a VERY good week here at Microsoft! Very good indeed! (In the meanwhile, the man who opposed me at Yahoo (The Vagrant Yang) continues to marinate in his own feecees on the streets of Redmond! http://www.flickr.com/photos/ballmerrockz/3741197526/ Let him be a lesson to all!
I agree with you. I don't see this changing anything at all about SEO.I paid little attention to MSN before or even the Bing now.I used to search sth through google or yahoo sometimes because I think I can find large amount of content by google.It's also very difficult to rank higher on Google pages as there are so many competitors using almost the same keywords.
I paid little attention to MSN before or even the Bing now.I used to search sth through google or yahoo sometimes because I think I can find large amount of content by google.It's also very difficult to rank higher on Google pages as there are so many competitors using almost the same keywords.
This deal is obviously a move of desperation on Microsoft's behalf. Realizing that Google controls over 60% of the SE market, the only reasonable move by the two trailing competitors was to form an alliance. Will it change the landscape of SEO? I find it highly unlikely, as their search algorithms will likely remain the same as before their alliance. Any modifications to them would have been made regardless of the deal, so the deal in and of itself is unlikely to change the way crawlers read our websites.
One thing to consider is the possible loss of yahoo's site explorer tool which will impact backlink analysis for some… although like all things in SEO.. i am sure something will emerge in its wake.
Services like SEOmoz's linkscape may become a little more popular.
Seriously dan , this is totally unexpected..as we all are expected some SEO stuff here or something related to their combined algorithm but here we got something else. thnks for that