This weeks news has some drastic changes to the search landscape that could mean… Well, anything really. There’s also some smaller news about Google which is worth mentioning, so let’s dive in:
Microsoft Bing to power AOL Search
AOL Search, while relatively small, is still a thing. Microsoft just signed a deal to power it for the next 10 years, while giving a big part of their ads business to AOL. What’s more surprising to me is this news that came out on the side: Bing is now sustainable in itself. Microsoft has been pouring money into it for quite a while, as far as “we” knew, but now apparently “It’s a multibillion dollar business, and it does pay for itself”. Good news as that means they’ll keep on competing with Google!
Yahoo! testing Google
Yahoo! is testing Google as a provider for it’s search results, instead of Bing. First noticed by Aaron Wall at SEOBook, this could have quite some impact. SEOs should really watch what happens here mostly because it impacts how much traffic a good ranking in Google will give you. The reasoning is probably simple: Google ads are worth much more than Bing ads, so this would increase Google’s revenue. The fact that Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer is an ex-Googler probably doesn’t hurt in this deal either.
DuckDuckGo expanding
To show that search is alive and vibrant even outside these three historical enemies, DuckDuckGo is expanding their “suggest” feature to 34 new regions. They’re not exactly a big traffic driver yet, but I’m very happy to see other options grow slowly too.
Google becoming smart about Search Console
Google has put out some questions that are interesting as they show what they’re thinking about. This post has details, but this sentence specifically made me happy “To view a combined Search Analytics report that includes different URL versions of your site (http and https).” Yes. Please. www and non-www too and we’re about done if we can also verify them all at once.
The Panda is a “couple of weeks” away, we think
Nothing more fun than guessing when a new update is going to hit. People at Google estimating when it might happen are usually wrong, but the latest is “a couple of weeks“. We’ll see. Just know that it’s coming. Just like Winter.
Google in other languages
If you think about how Google’s algorithm works a lot, you’re bound to think “but how does that work in language X”. Welcome to the world of a polyglot. This post has some interesting insights.
SEO at Pinterest
I’ve been meaning to share this article (which was written in January) for a while, and keep forgetting. It details how Pinterest experiments with SEO. Fun read, might give you some ideas for testing.
That’s it, see you next week!
This post first appeared as Weekly SEO Recap: Search landscape changes on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!
Source:: SEO
