Microsoft Bids for Yahoo

Karen Luther - February 11, 2008

If you haven’t heard already, Microsoft is out to buy Yahoo. And so here’s the low down. Microsoft Corp. has made a $44.6 billion bid to Yahoo.Inc. This is not the first time Microsoft has extended an offer, and it illustrates their resolve in having the two companies come together. What’s different this time, is that it looks like Yahoo is taking the bid into real consideration.

All I can say is that my head is reeling with all the possible implications. My main interest is with organic search and what impact on optimization efforts this merger will have.

On the one hand, it may make life a little easier. It’s one less search engine algorithm that you have optimize your site toward. This could allow you to streamline your SEO efforts. On the other hand, it could actually become more difficult to cover your bases among the search engines. Which in my opinion (and trust me it is just an opinion), seems to be the most likely. What happens many times is that your site will perform differently among the different engines. This is to be expected since they have different algorithms. But for the most part, since they have the biggest market share, many people focus most of their energy on optimizing for Google. If Microsoft and Yahoo combine, then there very well could be two major players with a more equal amount of market share — which will then beg the question: Who do you gear your SEO efforts toward?