This past Tuesday, Yahoo flipped the switch to their new search engine “back-end” provider of search results. This only effects the U.S. market as the test for better search continues for Yahoo.

The U.S. Department of Justice approved Microsoft’s takeover of Yahoo search engine and the reasoning is that it would combine the resources of both search indexes from both domains and would speed up Bing’s automated learning. Since Bing and Yahoo would have more data to draw upon, Bing and Yahoo have a better chance of finding what the web user is looking for according the the Dept. of Justice.

The presence of Bing is only noticeable at the surface with a small “Powered by Bing” icon on the search results pages. The actual search results themselves seem very similar, and I doubt that there will be many people distinguish one set of results from the other set.

Bing and Google have been in a “who offers the best features” war since last year, and all three search engines have relative strengths and weaknesses. While Google remains the preferred place for search, it’s only slightly ahead of the new Bing and Yahoo partnership according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s most recent study.

Most analysts agree that the purpose of using Bing as the back-end for Yahoo’s search engine and results pages is to allow Yahoo to focus on being a content portal.

Because of this new partnership, Lawyer Success, Inc. has been getting numerous calls from law firms to have their website reviewed against the new Yahoo/Bing algorithm. If you would like this review, simply call (769) 218-6099 for a review of your attorney web site’s SEO for Bing and Yahoo compliance.