Are Search Results Becoming Platform-Agnostic?
The Deal
Earlier this year Yahoo renegotiated their exclusive deal with Bing, who have been powering the search engine for the past few years. This meant Yahoo were free to look elsewhere for search engines to partner with – and so came about the deal with Google.
The outcome of which is that Yahoo are now able to choose between both Bing and Google results when answering queries. With three of the biggest search engines linked in this way, it’s definitely a sign of a shift in search engine technology.
Platform-Agnostic SEO
Although Google is and will continue to be, the biggest presence in the search market, this partnership is a definitive step towards search results being viewing as platform-agnostic.
As far as SEO practices are concerned not much will change, the difference comes when looking at analytics – it may no longer be enough to focus on Google rankings alone. Instead of concentrating solely on rankings in Google, it may be beneficial to take rankings from other search engines into consideration. As an article on Search Engine Land stated: “Search engine optimization is no longer synonymous with “Google optimization.”
Another change that platform-agnostic results may bring could be a simplifying of best practices for SEO. With less competition between search engines and results featured across different platforms, it may mean that only one set of guidelines is needed for ranking – although simultaneously, algorithms may become much more complicated due to the complex relationships between search engines.
Although this Google-Yahoo partnership may not make a huge difference to SEO at the moment, it definitely could be a first step towards a change in the way we analysis search – so watch this space.
