Yahoo And Bing Search Deal – What’s that?
In 2005, Yahoo and Bing reached a search agreement through which Microsoft Bing search engine had to be the exclusive search results provider on Yahoo.
Concretely every search queries made on Yahoo used to rely on Bing results.
This original agreement was written in order to make Microsoft search engine the exclusive provider of desktop search services – Yahoo was supposed to take responsibility for signing up advertisers.
At that moment, Yahoo revenue per search was clearly not reaching expected targets – reaching such a deal was a key decision to increase Yahoo revenues that were falling dramatically in 2005.
What happened this year between Bing and Yahoo ?
The two search engines added new terms to their search deal – that made Microsoft’s Bing a non-exclusive provider of search results for Yahoo on the desktop segment.
Concretely since 2015 Yahoo is allowed to try out new search partnerships with others, and sign deals with others internet search companies, such as Google.
How About Google and Yahoo ?
A few days ago Yahoo communicated admitting running “small tests” with a variety of partners including search providers. For the moment Yahoo doesn’t clearly admits a real “search deal” with the company from Mountain View, even if plenty of Google search results are now listed through Yahoo..
What will change concretely?
Yahoo Search revenue is forecasted to increase by 10 to 18% within the next few months – not that surprising if we look at the 2015 search engines market share figures.
Google actually catches more than 88% of worldwide internet search volume, Yahoo and Bing respectively 3.67% and 4.12%.
Outsourcing search is actually a proven method of increasing revenues – In 2013 Yahoo used to get more than 30% of its search revenue from the Microsoft deal.
At Sekkei Studio, we still think that no matter where the search results come from or whether or not it’s getting outsourced, the thing we care the most is search, and results accuracy.
Leave a Reply