Can the Yahoo/Bing Tag-Team Beat Google?

The battle for search engine supremacy has taken a few interesting turns and twists over the last several months. First, Bing was launched with a heavy advertising campaign, trying to make a dent in Google's dominance. Then it was announced that Yahoo and Bing are going to collaborate with one another to share some of each other's services, strengths and abilities. So the question we're all asking is: can the Yahoo and Bing tag-team combine to beat Google?

It's important to understand exactly what this partnership between Yahoo and Bing means. The partnership is for a period of 10 years, and the basic terms of the deal are that Bing's search engine technology is going to be powering Yahoo's search. Bing also gains access to Yahoo's technology, and may use that to help improve and advanced their own algorithms and techniques.

What this means for those in the SEO world is that you have to be aware of what the Bing algorithms favor. Being able to rank well in Bing actually will now mean being able to rank well for both Bing and Yahoo. While Google has the dominant share, the combined forces of these two platforms is already significant, and may be increasing by leaps and bounds it the strategy works as they planned.

Another term of the deal is that Yahoo is going to handle the premium advertising sales for both search engines. However, it will be Microsoft's AdCenter that controls the self-serve advertising from both sites. This is something that can potentially shake up the world of PPC. Now instead of having to run separate campaigns, you can have a lower barrier to create a dual-campaign in both Yahoo and Bing.

The ease of this may cut into Google's Adwords revenues, and webmasters may begin favoring the Yahoo and Bing tag team. However, it also means that some of the low costs found in the separate Yahoo and AdCenter PPC programs may begin to disappear as competition rises. The quick movers who capitalize on the integration in the beginning will see the best results, before the competition catches up and the prices correspondingly rise.

So can the Yahoo and Bing tag-team conquer all that is Google? It's unlikely that Google falls below a majority share of the marketplace anytime soon. After all, you still "Google" something when you look it up, not "Bing" it. Google is therefore truly ingrained into our society. Additionally, Google has worked hard to integrate many services into their package besides just the core search engine. With Google Documents, Maps, Reader and much more, Google provides a great deal of services that can't be matched anywhere else

The likely result is that Yahoo and Bing are going to begin taking a chunk of change from Google Adwords, and will begin to win some market share of searches. How much that share will be remains to be seen, and how effective Yahoo and Bing work together against Google will have a large effect on that final tally.