The search engine marketing landscape is ever changing, and the second half of this year will prove to be no different.  There is one change that we’ve talked about with many of our clients, but unless you are immersed within the industry on a daily basis, this still may be unknown to you.  Yahoo and Microsoft (Bing) have created a partnership called the Search Alliance. 

So you may be asking, what exactly will be happening? Essentially two major changes will be taking place.  One is with the organic search results and the other with the paid search results.

For organic search, Bing will be the driving force (algorithm) behind the results.  Therefore, once this transition takes place, when you conduct a search on Yahoo!, the results that you see will be determined by the same algorithm that determines Bing’s organic results.  That being said, we expect that soon Yahoo! and Bing will have the same organic results.  The testing for the organic results is said to begin this summer, with the full (organic) transition taking place in August / September.  Keep in mind that once this transition takes place, Yahoo’s search results may still have a Yahoo look and feel.  So if you’ve never really cared or paid attention to your Bing positions, you definitely need to now!

On the paid search side, a lot of changes are also being made. Until now, marketers have been using two different platforms for managing their advertising on Bing and Yahoo. With the Search Alliance, marketers will now use one platform – Microsoft’s adCenter – to manage their paid search. The paid search transition should be finalized before the holiday season, but it could be pushed back into 2011 if needed. While many are touting that this will be easier for advertisers as they’ll have one place to manage their ads for both Yahoo and Bing, there are a few critical things that should be considered. First, there will no longer be a way to monitor your Bing ads separately from your Yahoo! ads. Your ads will soon be eligible to show on the “Search Alliance”.  In addition, as you probably have experienced, Bing and Yahoo! have different searcher demographics. As this Search Alliance takes place, your campaigns will likely require lots of initial monitoring and optimization tactics as a result of this “new” market. Also, if you transition your campaigns from another account over to adCenter, you will be starting with a blank slate in terms of historical performance, which will have to be built up over time.

Some internet marketers would agree that display ads on the content network don’t receive the credit they deserve. Some feel that only certain industries can do well with display ads in the content network.  However, Google has created view-through conversion tracking to help show advertisers and companies that display ads in the content network are producing results. 

View-through conversion tracking is an advocate for display ads in the content network. According to Google Adwords, view-through conversion tracking “provides a measure of the number of online conversions that happened within 30 days after a user saw, but did not click, a display ad on one of the sites on the Google Content Network.” View-through conversion tracking shows who went back and converted even though they didn’t click on the ad.

View-through conversion tracking is a great feature because it proves that ads can be triggering conversions even though there were no clicks. Think about it, when display advertising came out, it was on a cpm or (cost per thousand impressions) basis. Some marketers felt that this metric wasn’t convincing enough. People saw the ad, but that didn’t mean they were converting. As time went on Google offered cpc or (cost per click) ads and some marketers felt they were missing out because there ads weren’t being clicked on by consumers. View-through conversion tracking solves the issue for both parties. Whether an advertiser does cpm or cpc for display ads, they can see conversions that occurred, simply because someone saw an ad.  

Internet marketers can prove that display ads in the content network are producing results with Google’s view-through conversion tracking. The results are coming in from view-through conversion tracking and some people will be surprised. There are conversions coming in without a single click being made. View-through conversion tracking is definitely an asset for any internet marketer running display ads.

Less than a month after Yahoo pulled the plug on their popular Paid Inclusion program. The company has decided to outsource its shopping engine to PriceGrabber. This decision to exit the shopping engines won’t come as too much of a shock to those in the industry given Yahoo’s future plans with search advertising. However, it is surprising that they decided to give this business to PriceGrabber over Microsoft’s platform, Bing Shopping.

Perhaps Yahoo believes that by giving Microsoft their shopping business, they will eventually become too dependent on them. Either way, it should be interesting to see how this will play out for all parties involved.

Most importantly is how this will affect the advertisers. My suggestion would be to stay ahead of the game and open an account with PriceGrabber directly. Be ready to capture the major shift in traffic as the largest shopping engine outsources all their traffic to a direct a comparison shopping site. By advertising through these types of engines you have the ability to reach a more qualified audience.