The Big Switch – Yahoo moves to Bing-Powered Search Results

August 24, 2010 – Yahoo’s alliance with Bing was announced today by Shashi Seth, Senior Vice President of Yahoo, "Yahoo! Web, Image, and Video search experiences on both desktop and mobile devices are now powered by the Microsoft platform in the US and Canada (English), with more markets to come."

In short, this means whenever anyone does an organic search on Yahoo, they’ll get the exact same results as if they were searching on Bing. Organic search is the first switch, soon to be followed by paid search (PPC) advertising later with the integration of Microsoft Adcenter. This integration is expected to be completed in October, just in time for the holiday buying season kickoff.

What will happen to Yahoo Site Explorer? Thankfully, it will remain in operation at least through early 2010, according to a post on the official Yahoo search blog. Sometime in 2012 Yahoo is planning to complete the switch to Bing’s backend technology.

What about Yahoo Local? It’s not part of the Bing deal and Yahoo will continue to power it's own local search.