Will Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Change SEO?

Although the details of the Microsoft-Yahoo still aren’t clear, there are many questions surrounding the partnership. While there are legal discrepancies that will go under legal microscope, there are other things to consider when thinking about how the deal will change search engine marketing. How will the deal affect SEO? As it stands, Google takes up a majority of searches performed on the Internet, thus making it a goal for some SEOs to optimize mostly for Google. According to Adage, however, “Bing is quite a bit different from Google and Yahoo, both in the way it ranks pages and the way it presents results on the page. And if search becomes more of a two-player market”.

The challenge will become optimizing for the different engines, if it ever does become necessary. After all, the merger of the two engines might not affect Google in the end. Additionally, the introduction of Google Caffeine might give another hint at where search engines are going in the future. How do you think SEO will change in the next year?