Bing to power Yahoo! searches in Ireland from today


3 Aug 2011

From today in Ireland and five other areas, Yahoo! will transition its back-end search technology to Microsoft, meaning Bing will power its search engine from now on.

Bing will now power Yahoo!’s search results in Ireland, the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain on PCs and mobiles.

The transition already occurred in the US, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, New Zealand, Peru and Venezuela. Bing will completely replace Yahoo!’s back-end search globally in 2012.

The search engine will still include rich results, Search Assist suggestions, site filters and related topic suggestions. Results will now show a “Powered by Bing” descriptor at the bottom of the pages.

Yahoo! and Microsoft hopes that by combining their userbase, this will attract a larger audience as they try to compete with Google’s more dominant search engine.

Yahoo! advises website owners to reassess their SEO strategy in light of it, as Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools will host Bing and Yahoo!’s webmaster resources and analytics. They also recommend that webmasters visit Bing Webmasters Tools to help optimise their sites for Bing.