Yahoo And Bing – The Cartoon

19 Jul 2010 by Graham Lyons - News bing, Search Alliance, yahoo 1 Comment »

Things may have gone a little quiet of late, but the inexorable merger between non-Google search powerhouses Yahoo and Bing appears to thunder on – even if it sometimes appears sometimes like it is on a geological timescale. A handy metaphor this recent explanatory-cartoon illustrates:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcKcOQNWhgo[/youtube]

I'm kidding of course, but it's difficult not to draw tenuous, over-analysed metaphors from this cartoon.

The message behind it is obvious though, advertisers are being prepped over the new search landscape. The need to use different systems to advertise on both Yahoo and Bing has been eliminated – the methods to reaching 30% of the search market share will be simpler.

The reference to the Yahoo And Microsoft Search Alliance may have a bit of a 'fellowship of the search' to it, but their combined strengths start to make them appear more relevant in this currently AdWords-heavy world.

The 'Quality' Land-grab?

The videos reference to “searchers who actually buy things” made me think of the recent interview with Search Mojo's Janet Driscoll Miller. Her talk at SMX Advanced looked at differences in traffic from Bing and Google – she referred to one company who had found that Bing's organic traffic actually outperformed Google's in terms of 'pages visited', 'time on site' and 'bounce rate'.

Perhaps this will be the sort of battleground Microsoft will pick when combating Google? After all, most ecommerce companies would take 1 visitor who buys over 5 who just visit. If Microsoft can imbue their new search alliance with the belief that it delivers higher quality traffic then they might just be onto something…

..More information can be found on the Search Alliance site.