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.

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.

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