How The MS/Bing/Yahoo Deal Changes SEO:

It doesn't.

I mean, once they get it all done, there will be:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

After many edits, re-edits, changes, un-changing the changes, well… you get the idea… I am happy to present the 2009 edition of SEO Fast Start – grab it from the download page!

Minor changes in the Keyword Strategy chapter. Significant updates in the Site Structure chapter.

I will be doing a free webinar this Wednesday evening to discuss the changes – get on the SEO Fast Start newsletter/mailing list to get an invite.

Thanks for reading!

Dan

"When you have ruled out the possible, whatever remains, however horrifying, will be more entertaining."

Matt Cutts made some comments about PageRank sculpting in general, and Google's handling of the nofollow attribute on internal links, last week at SMX Advanced in Seattle. Here is my report on those events, and my conclusion about the shocking truth behind the "smoke and mirrors."

Please watch this video:

Here's a link Leslie Rohde's less entertaining but more informative review of the matter. I apologize to everyone. I think the "Scenario #3" Leslie describes is actually quite plausible.

It's also quite possible that there's something to the "null hypothesis" description from Barry Welford.

P.S. If anyone doesn't get the joke, it's probably my fault.

P.P.S. I should probably be pimping my new link building course that starts next week.

UPDATE:

Update from Matt – doesn't add total clarity at first: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/ But the comments he added seem to indicate that Leslie's scenario (it doesn't evaporate, it goes off to the rest of the index) nailed it.