YAHOO - Bing Microsoft Merger Search Update

Below, for your information, I have posted a recent update on YAHOO - Bing Microsoft Merger Search which was sent to my marketing/advertising department.

"As we continue to work closely with Microsoft to implement our search alliance, we wanted to provide you with an update on our progress, as well as call out some important, upcoming milestones to help ensure you are prepared for the changes to come.

Transition with Quality
Our goal remains providing a quality transition experience for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada in 2010, while protecting the holiday season. We've continued to make good progress against this goal, and we regularly evaluate our progress. However, please remember that, as we continue to go through our series of checkpoints, if we conclude that it would improve the overall experience, we may choose to defer the transition to 2011.

Organic Search Transition
To date, we've focused most of our communications to you on the paid search transition to adCenter. However, another key aspect of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is the transition of Yahoo! organic search results (those found on the main body of the page). Assuming our testing continues to yield high quality results, we anticipate that our organic search results will be powered by Bing beginning in the August/September timeframe.

If organic search results are an important source of referrals to your website, you'll want to make sure that you're prepared for this change:

• Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that drive your business, to help determine any potential impact to your traffic and sales
• Decide if you'd like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate
• Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Bing crawler, as Bing results will be displayed for approximately 30%* of overall search query market share after this change

For more specifics on the organic search transition, please refer to the Self-service Advertiser FAQs on the Yahoo! Transition Center.

Organic and Paid Search Testing
To help us deliver on our goal of transition with quality, we are conducting the necessary tests to ensure that all of the many complex, logistical pieces are in place. While there's nothing you need to do to prepare for testing, please keep in mind the following:

• Though much of our testing is already happening offline, this month we'll also test the delivery of organic and paid search results provided by Microsoft on live Yahoo! traffic
• Testing volumes will fluctuate during this period, with paid search volume in particular kept low enough to help minimize any potential impact to your account

Editorial Guidelines
Yahoo! and Microsoft have created joint editorial guidelines that will begin taking effect for both Yahoo! and Microsoft paid search advertisers in early August. We encourage you to review these now, so that you understand any potential impact to your ads or keywords. Notable changes include new guidelines for gambling and contests, and disallowed content. For a detailed overview of the editorial policy changes that will soon take effect, please read the New Editorial Guidelines article.

We are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial for you as possible. We appreciate your business, and look forward to bringing you the benefits of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance."

Anthony
Your Website Marketing Partner

Benefits of Using a Website Template

One of the fastest and easiest ways to set up a website is by using a website template. Depending on your degree of knowledge and expertise many websites can be designed by you using a template. This is simply an "almost ready-made" website that you can use instead of trying to design one from scratch. It allows you to have many features of a great high quality web site without having to pay for a custom website. However; depending on the website template you choose there are certain limitations.

Due to the fact that you can get your site set up faster it will help you to increase production. You will have more time for other important details that need to be taken care of. Since there are so many different template designs available for you to choose from, it is normally easy to find the one that suits your business the best. It eliminates a lot of the hassles and aggravations that accompany trying to start up a website from the ground up. What's even better is the fact that many of the so called "bugs" have already been worked out.

As I mentioned earlier, some degree of knowledge and patience is required. If you purchase a web site template you will need to have it installed on your web host. Your business specific text, pictures and email etc. will need to be installed on the template as well as other items such as database, order forms and credit card payment processing.

If you need help with your template please remember ProNet USA services website templates.

Go to ProNetUSA.com and choose from one of the many templates from ProNetUSA's approved website template companies. We have screened these website template companies to ProNetUSA's high quality of service and professionalism.

Anthony,
Your Website Marketing Partner