Yahoo! has announced that it is to start testing search results powered by Bing.n an email to advertisers, the company said that it is adding to its offline testing efforts by also trialling the delivery of organic and paid search results provided by Microsoft on live Yahoo! traffic….
Yahoo search users may soon start seeing results served by Bing. According to Yahoo’s Vice President Search Product Operations Kartik Ramakrishnan, the company has “started testing organic (also referred to as algorithmic) and paid search listings from Microsoft for up to 25 percent of Yahoo! Search traffic in the U.S.”As Yahoo demonstrates in the above screenshot, that means that users that are part of the test will see results from Bing inside Yahoo’s familiar interface. In spite of the impending changes, Yahoo has continued to add features and make design changes, and the company indicates that it will continue to do so post-integration.
While testing volumes are likely to fluctuate, Yahoo! stressed that it will endeavour to keep paid search volumes low so that the work does not affect advertising.It added that after the full transition takes place – which is expected in either August or September – Bing will power nearly one-third of global search queries for both organic and paid listings, based on comScore data.
With testing now underway, it would seem then that Yahoo and Microsoft’s plans for integration following their massive search and advertising partnership – signed back in July 2009 – are on track. When regulators approved the deal back in February, Microsoft and Yahoo indicated that they planned to have search and advertising integration completed by the end of 2010.ow, Ramakrishnan writes that, “we anticipate that our U.S. and Canada organic search listings in both desktop and mobile experiences will be fully powered by the Microsoft platform beginning in the August/September timeframe, and paid search in October.”
Resources :mashable.com,directnews.co.uk
