Everyone in the SEO and web development world has likely read multiple articles on the Yahoo/Microsoft deal today, and if you’re reading this you’ve likely developed your own opinions on whether or not it was a wise decision for either company.  However, we (meaning the SEO team at SEO Group, not the royal we) are more concerned with how this will effect our search engine optimization process.

Our initial opinion?  It is not going to drastically change anything overnight.  Google still has most of the market share and in a way, combining the two lesser search engines actually will save SEO types time and effort in the long run, since they are not dealing with rankings on two different engines with different algorithms.  If you use Yahoo Site Explorer or other tools on a regular basis, you might want to consider finding alternatives - with Bing taking over, these may not be available for long.

What are your thoughts on the new Yahoo powered by Bing - do you think it is an attempt to join forces against the Goliath that is Google (two Davids are better than one?) or do you think that is a smart  move that will change the online search game?  If you work in SEO, do you think that this move will affect your work?