After all the rumors and last-minute botched deals over the years, it’s finally happened: Microsoft and Yahoo have reached an agreement to merge their search services in hopes of finally being able to compete with the grand search overlord, Google.Under the new 10-year, $275 million agreement, Microsoft’s new Bing search engine will power Yahoo Search, while Yahoo Search Marketing will be powered by Microsoft AdCenter. So what does this mean for small-business owners? Well, keep an eye on your Yahoo rankings because they are going to change once the Yahoo search engine is replaced by Bing. As for your Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns, the good news is that your ads will now be seen across a greater number of websites. If you’ve been running campaigns through Microsoft AdCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing, once the change takes effect you will only have one campaign to manage, which will free up your time to work on other search marketing strategies.
