I would think that MSN is now in the position to challenge Google and they are in much better shape now then they have been in awhile, at least in the search engine game. Plus they have a lot of money and maybe they aren’t done spending it.   Yahoo didn’t do that bad here because they have been overmatched and out of it for a long time and they knew it, the results at Yahoo organic suck and the Yahoo PPC program is weak.  So now they can focus on other things and in the long run it probably will be the end user and advertisers who come out ahead.

From Matt Cutts Blog:
Who did better in the Microsoft-Yahoo deal?

BACKGROUND ON DEAL

*  The term of the agreement is 10 years

* Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing web search platforms

* Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.

* Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology.

* Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force.

* Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process.

The search brand at Yahoo will remain to be “Yahoo Search” but it will have a label at the bottom of the page that says “Powered by Bing.” Nothing is changing now, not until they get regulatory approval, and then when they get that approval, they will begin pushing out the integration.

So Bing will now power search on Yahoo! and Yahoo!’s salesforce will sell the premium (non-self service) search advertising for Yahoo!/Bing. Bing also gets access to Yahoo!’s core search technology and can, at its option, leverage that to help create more relevant results.

BOTTOM LINE

Nothing is going to happen until 2010 at the earliest, so you do you have time to prepare.  I would say now that Bing will have a 15-28% share of the market, that it makes a lot of sense to start optimizing for BING now.  In the past MSN was hardly worth optimizing for because they usually didnt send much traffic but now it will make more sense.  A good tool to use to see the differnent results that come up now at Google and Bing, is the Bing v. Google tool.

Microsoft is expected to spend $80 million to $100 million on Bing marketing which would be a nice hedge against Yahoo! because Bing will most likely take market share from Yahoo!.

Whether Bing ultimately succeeds or not, it will push Google to keep innovating search, and the new pay per click competition will ensure that Google doesn’t get too greedy.

How is Bing different from Google?

Bing is not dramatically different from Google, but some people have found its results stronger. There are some visible changes:

• Bing shows a preview of the web pages in the search results when you hover your mouse pointer at the right side of the search results.
• Bing displays fewer results if it is certain that it has understood your intent. The search for “Facebook”, for example, brings up just one result linking to the site itself.
• Some search results are divided into categories. For example, if you search for the popular musician “Justin Timberlake”, you’ll get results in the categories news, songs, movies, biography, wallpaper and downloads. In addition, the search results show images, videos and the popularity of the musician.
• Wikipedia searches can be displayed inline in the search results without leaving the Bing site by clicking the “Enhanced view” link.
• Bing features a different background image every day. The image contains special hidden hotspots that lead you to more information (soon advertising?) about the image.
• Despite the background image, Bing’s homepage loads very quickly in your web browser because the search box and logo load first. You can turn off the background image.
• Bing’s video search lets you watch videos without leaving the search engine.
• Bing offers specific health, shopping and travel search engines, as well as instant answers to travel searches. For instance, the search “Vegas hotels” displays a selection of hotels in Las Vegas, including hotel stars and prices.
• Bing’s search history lets you return to your most recent searches of the last two days. This feature can be turned off to protect your privacy.
• Some of Google’s features are missing, for example, Bing doesn’t seem to recognize misspellings and returns no results in these cases.
• f
• f

So far it looks like it has some cool features but it has the same results it always had in MSN.com. Some of the search results are better then Googles results but usually Google still has better overall results it seems but the jury is still out.  One thing is for sure, people are going to know the word BING because of the advertising MSN will do and enough people might actually use it but will they keep using it?

Yahoo describes Search Pad in the following way:

Search Pad is a note taking application built into Yahoo! Search that automatically assists you in saving websites you visit and taking notes as you search. Search Pad helps you collect, edit, organize, save, print, and email your notes for immediate or future use.

Search Pad uses various cues to discern when users are doing research (time spent on sites and other factors) as opposed to other online activities (e.g., site navigation, business address lookups, etc). When it decides a user has indeed initiated a research session — say travel planning — it prompts a user to “take notes”:

As users go through their sessions, Search Pad automatically collects the sites visited, together with thumbnail images of those sites. Users may cut and paste text from any site into Search Pad and Yahoo will locate the corresponding page and URL where that text appears automatically. For example, if one copies and pastes text from Wikipedia or Amazon, Search Pad will find the link to the page on which that text appears.

It thus minimizes the labor involved in saving the results of online research.

Search Pad sessions or “documents” can be saved (after log-in), printed and shared. Individual sites or content entries can also be reordered or deleted on the Search Pad document. Users can also annotate or compose notes independently in Search Pad documents. There are no storage limits and files will be saved indefinitely.

The system also saves recent searches. Here’s a video demonstration of Search Pad’s chief features.

Note From Danny Sullivan: I hope to revisit the new tool myself in the coming weeks. I’ve been tracking it for several months, as Yahoo has developed it, and it really struck me as having potential to pull in new searchers. In particular, I can recall seeing it for the first time shortly after having done a lot of online research to purchase a new TV. I had a piece of paper scrawled with notes and URLs as I went into the store — then I saw Search Pad, which would have far more easily created the exact same type of summary for me.

Note from Greg Sterling: This story appeared prematurely, before the embargo lifted, because of confusion on my part about the specific timing of the embargo. I apologize to Yahoo for the confusion.

source

You may or may not be using social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, or Digg in your business. The overarching theme from this panel at PubCon was… why not, what do you have to lose?

Social media gurus, including Warren Whitlock, Co-Author of The Twitter Revolution, Brian Carter, Director of Search Marketing for Fuel Interactive, Guillaume Bouchard, CEO of NVI, and Kent Schoen, Facebook Product Manager, joined forces at this session to discuss the Big sexy buzz around social media and provide some food for thought to convince skeptics that social media can be a successful marketing channel.

Warren Whitlock kicked off the session discussing twitter habits.

There are two stages of Twitter:
1.    Denial: Why would anyone care what I ate for breakfast?
2.    Reluctant Acceptance: I have a Twitter account but haven’t seen any traffic

The Twitter Revolution really is about making meaningful connections.  Let people know what you are up to, because contrary to some beliefs, people do care.

Warren explained that in today’s online world, we are all publishers. If you have a MySpace page, a Facebook account, or use Twitter, you publish content for other users.

Many people have asked the question, “how do I get more people to my website?” Warren’s advice: publish more content and tweet more. Give users more advice, resources, and content and they will find your website and make a connection with your brand.

The most important thing to know about Twitter is that there are no rules.

You can use Twitter however you want, but know that people are not going to follow you if you spam them, and only post promotional links. Be authentic in your approach and you will make a connection.

Next up, Brian Cartern discussed the benefits of the big Trifecta.

What is the Trifecta?

The Trifecta is a combination of blogging, bookmarking and Twittering. The key is to incorporate optimization into each corner of the Trifecta.

Optimization = Getting the results you want faster

Brian gave us his 5 step process to optimize anything:
1.    Identify your goal
2.    Establish a measurement
3.    Where you at?
4.    Plan Route to Goal
5.    Let results guide progress

In social media, if you want to succeed, you need a brand that is more powerful than your target markets. In social media, you need a powerful goal.

Why does the trifecta work?
-    Blog is a place for you to establish your authority
-    Bookmarking is social proof
-    Twitter gets you attention

Guillaume Bouchard talked mainly to social news and the benefits of sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon, and stated that the main principle of social news sites it to catalyze natural link growth.

The realistic role of social news:
-    Produce link worthy  content
-    Taking luck out of the equation

The Social platforms: Digg and StumbleUpon make up 90% of social traffic.

Digg:
-    Onsite voting
-    Tough to succeed
-    Can get buried
-    Large traffic spike
-    Success: home page

StumbleUpon:
-    Toolbar voting
-    Not as tough to succeed
-    Can get thumbed-down
-    Lower total, more gradual spike
-    Success: recommendation surge

Make it or break social media strategy involves:
-    Content
-    Platform
-    Submitter
-    Category
-    Vote (solicitation)

Content Development:
Approval = perception of quality and enjoyment / time taken to enjoy

Give quality:
-    They like to laugh, but avoid failed attempts at humor
-    They appreciate hard work, but avoid build-content-quick-schemes
-    They like learning
-    They tend to follow their communities (dis)approval
-    They do not like spam, or SEO & marketing, for that matter

Save Time:
-    They don’t want too much text
-    They want to be able to skim and get the basic idea
-    They don’t like having to click unnecessarily
-    They resent when your server can’t handle their visitorship
-    They like being able to vote right now

Platform of Trust:
Both Digg staff and users value trust. Unfortunately, trust isn’t easy to earn.

The numbers
-    Trusted domains account for +90% of home pages
-    Of non-trusted domains, 30% are images, 10% are videos
-    ~100-125 stories hit the home page every day

The Trusted Submitter:
-    Domains are trusted, but so are people
-    Trusted submitters are less likely to be buried
-    Receive immediate fried votes
-    More than 30% of sites on the home page are from top submitters

Category Selection:
-    Different categories have different voting requirements
-    Digg has a proportional home page breakdown for each category

Soliciting Votes:
-    Look for exchange opportunities
-    Leverage instant messaging
-    In-site communication services
-    Vote on lots of stories

Ken Shone, product manager for Facebook, wrapped up the session sharing some Facebook statistics with the group.

Facebook Users:
-    120 million active users
-    15 million mobile users
-    1billion profile details
-    20 million daily status updates
-    100 million daily pokes
-    20 million daily wall posts

Social media is influential. A survey conducted asked users when they were considering purchasing a product or service, what was the most trusted and valued source of information. Over 70% said word of mouth.

With massive amounts of content online, communities and friends have become the filter to help determine an individual’s media preferences and is used to identify what content is worth their time.

Measurement and analytics with Facebook:

Passive measurement
-    Lexicon measures social interactions and demographics on Facebook
-    Identify the trend in conversation
-    Ad tools can help you understand who is out there (geographic and demographics)

Active measurement
-    Discover who’s engaging with your business and how

Demographic data may confirm your suspicions or lead you in a new direction. Make informed decisions based on how people interact with your content.

Great post from TopRank Blog