Yahoo Organic results powered by Bing from 3rd August in UK

Yahoo has just sent an email announcing that the UK organic results will be powered by Bing from 3rd August. This shouldn’t be a big deal for most sites because they have only a few percent market share but it certainly will double the influence that the Bing algorithm has in the UK.

We wanted to let you know that we are now ready to transition Yahoo! organic search results (the non-paid listings found on the main body of the Yahoo! search page) to Microsoft. This is an important aspect of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance and will help us toward our goal of further improving the overall relevance of Yahoo! organic results globally.

The organic search transition will begin on August 3rd 2011 for Yahoo! European properties in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

While no action is required on your part for this transition, if organic search results are an important source of referrals to your website, you’ll want to make sure that you’re prepared for this change:

• Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that drive your business, help determine any potential impact to your traffic and sales

Decide if you’d like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate

• Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimise your website for the Bing crawler, to help ensure your site is prominently listed in both Yahoo! and Bing organic search results.

Please note that Yahoo! is NOT transitioning paid search results at this time, and you should continue managing your Yahoo! Search Marketing account as usual. We will provide you with ample notice prior to the paid search transition of your market, to help you prepare for a smooth transition.

BY Patrick Altoft AT 11:19am ON Monday, 1 August 2011

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3 and has worked in the SEO industry for over 10 years. With experience across some of the worlds largest brands as well as startup businesses Patrick is well known in the industry and speaks regularly at the major SEO conferences and events. Follow Patrick on Twitter or Google+