Yahoo Search Starts Using Bing to Power as Much as 25 Percent of Searches

Yahoo plans to start serving organic and paid search results Powered by Bing on Yahoo Search. Already, Yahoo says, up to 25 percent of its search results in the US are being served by Bing. So far, testing has gone smooth and the merger is on track. Live testing is one of the final stages and Yahoo hopes to complete the transition by September.

“We’ve started testing organic (also referred to as algorithmic) and paid search listings from Microsoft for up to 25 percent of Yahoo! Search traffic in the U.S. The primary change for these tests is that the listings are coming from Microsoft,” Kartik Ramakrishnan, Vice President of Yahoo Search Product Operations, said.

“However, the overall page should look the same as the Yahoo! Search you’re used to – with rich content and unique tools and features from Yahoo!. If you happen to fall into our tests, you might also notice some differences in how we’re displaying select search results due to a variety of product configurations we are testing,” he added.

These tests are only done for desktop visitors on the main Yahoo Search site. The transition for organic search results, on this page should be completed in the August, September time frame, if everything goes smooth. For paid search results, which will also be powered by Bing, the transition is scheduled to be completed by October. This covers just users from the US and Canada.

For users, the transition should be seamless and mostly invisible. All of the elements on Yahoo Search besides the search results and search ads will be powered by Yahoo and will look and feel exactly the same.

Mobile search properties will be transitioned in the coming months, but Yahoo is not providing a clear timeline. Interestingly, Yahoo is not bound to Microsoft for mobile searches and ads under its deal with the software giant, but has opted for it in the US, Canada, UK and France.