What are the SEO Implications of a Yahoo Owned by Microsoft?

A while ago, trying to describe the concept of Search Engine Optimisation to a friend, I hit upon this analogy:

 “It’s
like Isaac Newton trying to calculate the exact force of gravity.
Google’s algorithm is like gravity, and all the SEOs are like Newton,
trying to figure the effect of this algorithm on their client’s sites.
However, you have to imagine that God keeps screwing with Newton by
changing the force of gravity on a daily basis just for the fun of it.”

In the world of Search Engine Optimisation, Google can afford to
be seen as a somewhat malevolent force – toying with its index at will –
seeing as (according to Hitwise) it has captured over 60% of global
search volume. Its closest rival, Yahoo! accounts for less than half
this amount, and thus Google has ensured a steady stream of SEOs
scrambling to unravel Google’s (constantly changing) algorithm and
achieve the holy trinity of: 1) high Page Rank, leading to 2) a high
rank on the search engine results page (SERP) and thus 3) higher AdSense
earnings.

However, this could all be set to change with the
possibility of Microsoft buying out Yahoo!. Although Yahoo! has resisted
such a bid in the past, Microsoft is offering shareholders a
considerable premium for their shares in the struggling company, which
has recently suffered job cuts and falling profits. So far discussion
has mostly been regarding the effects on the SEM (Search Engine
Marketing) industry. However, at this point we’ve seen little discussion
on the SEO implications of this potential take-over.

The three major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s
MSN) account for almost 95% of global search volume. As mentioned
previously, Google accounts for approximately 60% of searches. However,
the combined forces of Yahoo! and MSN total almost 35% of search volume,
making it a worthy rival and perhaps encouraging SEOs to optimise for
their search as well as – or instead of – Google’s. Microsoft has
realised this potential, offering Yahoo! shareholders a hefty premium
(around 60% above Yahoo!’s market value) to take control of Yahoo!’s
search engine.

Yahoo! themselves have a record of buying out other search
engines, including Overture, AllTheWeb, Inktomi and AltaVista. Prior to
2004, Yahoo! used Google’s index as part of their own search functions
before developing their own index. Furthermore, Inktomi (one of the
companies acquired by Yahoo!) once powered MSN search, until Microsoft
to develop its own search engine. Both of these events happened in 2004,
which happens to be just before Google released its Jagger update –
this may explain some of the fundamental differences between Google and
the Yahoo! and MSN search engines.

So what might we expect from an MSN-owned Yahoo! search engine
results page? During our SEO research, we have found the following
consistent patterns between Yahoo!, MSN and Google:

Lower Google PR pages that would normally not appear on the
front pages of Google will appear on Yahoo! and MSN. This would suggest
that both sites have a different metric of quality and relevance than
Google.

More emphasis on volume and less on relevance for links in
Yahoo! and MSN, especially in MSN. This is possibly because Google
developed its Jagger updates which actively targeted linking behaviors
like mass reciprocal linking after both companies had started developing
their own indexes and already had a large amount of data to base their
work on

Google will give more weight to a diverse linking profile, where inbound
links are directed towards different pages within your site

Google tends to fluctuate and update faster, and contains a lot
of location specific information, for instance providing Google maps in
SERPs. They have also suggested that they may include new SERP elements
such as time-lines in the near future

Yahoo! and MSN are more susceptible to aggressive link building
campaigns, as Google filters links over time and may exclude (“sandbox”)
domains with unnatural link patterns. Similarly, Google tends to filter
a page for keywords or phrases that are used excessively

Google gives the most value to factors such as site age and
geographical factors. However, Google has also been criticized for
allowing older domains with “spammy” links to rank well. As a result, it
generally takes longer to rank in Google than the other search engines.

Due to Google’s perceived bias towards old, established sites,
it seems possible that newer sites targeting competitive search terms
might abandon optimising for Google altogether and instead focus their
efforts on achieving a higher rank in the MSN/Yahoo! index, thus
loosening Google’s current stranglehold on the SEO and SEM market. In
turn, searchers unhappy with results returned by a Google search could
be confident that the MSN/Yahoo! product would return markedly different
results, due to the variation in the quality and relevance metrics. If
Microsoft successfully acquires Yahoo! I suspect we will see a lot of
smaller, newer businesses optimising for MSN/Yahoo! rather than solely
focusing on Google. This could potentially create more diversity in the
search engine world as we see older, stronger businesses at the top of
the Google index and newer, more active businesses gaining a greater
edge in Yahoo! and MSN.