Yahoo starts moving to Microsoft's Bing

 

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By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 18 Aug 2010 at 10:09

The wedding is done and the honeymoon over: now it's time for Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo to move in together, but whose stuff will they keep and what will get tossed on the rubbish heap?

Microsoft and Yahoo signed a deal last year which will see the software giant's Bing search engine run Yahoo's searches.

After limited testing last month, Yahoo will start moving its back-end systems over to Microsoft, starting with its US and English Canada sites. The switch-over is expected to be completed globally by 2012.

Keep an eye out for the 'Powered by Bing' indicator at the bottom of our search results page

"Keep an eye out for the 'Powered by Bing' indicator at the bottom of our search results page, which will indicate that you are viewing listings from Microsoft," said Shashi Seth, vice president for search product operations, in a post on the Yahoo blog.

Searches via Yahoo will use Bing's search tech, but results will still be displayed using Yahoo's own user interface.

Pay up for BOSS

Yahoo's Build your Own Search Service (BOSS) will no longer be offered for free. BOSS lets web developers integrate Yahoo search into sites, tweaking it to suit their own needs.

"We are exploring a potential fee-based structure as well as ad-revenue models that will enable BOSS developers to monetise their offerings," said Neal Sample, vice president for social, open and publishing platforms. "When we roll out these changes, BOSS will no longer be a free service to developers."

Yahoo will also kill off its SearchMonkey tools at the beginning of October. Search Monkey opened up Yahoo's platform to let developers adjust results for their pages.

Sample said that the Yahoo Query Language would still be used for related and spelling suggestions, but other APIs, for web, image and news search will no longer be supported. The APIs for Yahoo's Site Explorer and MyBlogLog will also be shut down by the end of this year.

Website admins

Yahoo said Website admins should start getting to know Bing's Webmaster Centre tools, but should keep using Yahoo's Site Explorer until all markets have moved over in 2012.

"This will help to ensure that you continue to get high quality traffic from searches originating on Yahoo and our partner sites, even in markets that are not yet transitioned to Microsoft’s systems," said Hemant Minocha, Site Explorer product manager.

"We will share site information that you provide on Site Explorer with Microsoft during this transition period, to ensure that you get high quality traffic from search results that are powered by Bing also."