Starting this week, Yahoo! will begin moving its search back-end to Microsoft’s Bing platform for US and Canadian users.
The announcement yesterday in Yahoo’s blog marks the beginning of the company’s move to Bing’s search technology, which will only fully replace Yahoo’s global search back-end in 2012.
When the adoption of Bing is complete, Microsoft’s search engine will account for 31.6% of the search market, up from its current 11% share. While this still isn’t quite halfway to catching Google’s 65.8% share, it will make Microsoft’s offering much more attractive to online advertisers.
The initial move only covers ‘organic’ search. The move to Microsoft’s AdCenter Platform for self-service ads will follow in due course, while Yahoo keeps a separate display ad business and remains free to use its own tools for display and mobile advertising, among other forms.
The initial rollout comes a year after Yahoo first announced that it would cease development of its own search technology and move to Bing. The company’s agreement with Microsoft means that Bing will run its searches for at least the next ten years.
