Google and Yahoo are back together again. This important relationship fizzled out in 2004, but it’s now back in play, which is big news in the search industry. But what does that mean for you?
First off, this is a positive for search in general; it allows Yahoo search users to receive more robust results with Google feeding its data through Yahoo’s search engine. But even more than that, it allows Google AdWords users or those using Google to run PPC campaigns to show up in results for Yahoo search queries—something that hasn’t happened in over 10 years. This expands the audience your message could reach.
While Google is the largest search engine, some people are diehard Yahoo users or they might use the default search engine for Mozilla or have downloaded Oracle where Yahoo is the default homepage. Currently, Google search ads are missing these folks, and they make up 12.7% of U.S. search queries, according to comScore. But you won’t be missing out on these searches for long.
So what do you have to do? Nothing! As long as you choose to show up on Google’s Search Networks partners, your ads will be eligible to show up on Yahoo search results.
But keep in mind you won’t be guaranteed these impressions on Yahoo, because right now Bing owns 51% of the search share. That extra 49% is at Yahoo’s discretion whether they want to show paid ads from their own internal search platform (Yahoo Gemini) or from Google AdWords. It is all based on the agreement as to how often and what ads are showing up.
Yahoo and Google have launched this partnership, but ultimately they need the go ahead from the Department of Justice on their agreement. The DOJ did reject a similar deal in 2008, but both parties seem optimistic that this time around things will be different.