So I am back from yet another holiday, travelling round Europe where I took in Oktoberfest (at least what I can remember of it!!) and its time to pick up the reigns where I left off and continue my education and journey online.

One interesting piece of breaking news that looks to be very pertinent in the online world and will affect a number of us, particularly those who are active in PPC, was highlighted by Ryan Deiss over at drivingtraffic.com:

It’s official!

Microsoft have today announced that they have struck a deal to power Yahoo’s search, while at the same time Yahoo will be powering paid ads on Bing.com (Microsoft’s new search platform…formerly known as MSN).

Full details here:

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-29release.mspx

…and here:

http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com/thedeal/Default.aspx

So why is this good news for us marketers?

It’s simple. With Yahoo and Microsoft now a team, Google finally has some competition in the search market. This means:

1. Ad costs may go down, and…
2. Google may stop being such enormous jerks to their advertisers (which could mean less “Google Slaps”)

Obviously this is just my speculation, and the deal doesn’t go final until 2010 so don’t expect anything to change overnight, but competition is (almost) always a good thing for consumers, so for now, at least, I’m cheering this deal.

Comment below and let me know what you think…

-Ryan

———————————————————————————————–

You can read Ryan Deiss’s original article here: 
http://drivingtraffic.com/microsoft-and-yahoo-challenge-google/

Thanks to Ryan for the scoop and simplifying what it actually means.

I for one am yet to delve into paid traffic (PPC) just yet, mainly as I am still establishing my foundations and leveraging free techniques, whilst I must admit that I have been put off by some horror stories of increasingly expensive clicks and ‘Google Slaps’, however with this new news it certainly is something on the agenda to visit in the future, which I’m sure I will blog about in due course…..

I would be interested to hear of your experinces or views on the merger or PPC so please feel free to leave your comments below.