SEO / SEM Blog by Search Circus

Late last month, Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a rare appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit and answered a few questions. Google’s founding team of Brin and Larry Page don’t really get out much, so Brin’s surprise visit was less of a typical Q-and-A session and more of an event. He answered a range of important questions, commenting on Google’s AdWords structure to his company’s relationship with Twitter. For anyone involved in Internet marketing, it’s required reading. You can find the entire interview at the Washington Post.

The part that created the most buzz online was his comment that it was a “shame” that Yahoo abandoned search. Brin commented that he believes in healthy competition in the Internet search market. “I think it’s a shame that Yahoo has abdicated that area.” He said, “Yahoo had a number of interesting innovations there, and I wish they could have remained in search.”

But the truth is, Yahoo is remaining in search, in a way. Part of the recent Microsoft/Yahoo deal has stipulated that Yahoo will use Microsoft’s new Bing search engine to power searches. So instead of simply giving up on Yahoo, which Brin slyly hinted that people should do, the question for Internet marketing experts is: how will this change the online search landscape?

If you’ve been following the Internet marketing world lately, you may question whether there’s been anything real competition at all. Google has been dominant, and most Internet marketing firms are content to simply concentrate on optimizing their client’s Websites for Google. Because who uses Microsoft or Yahoo? A lot of people, it turns out. While the latest numbers still have Google at a whopping 85% of the search market share, they’ve lost a bit to both Bing and Yahoo.

Why? Part of the explanation could be the huge marketing blitz Microsoft launched with the arrival of Bing. Add that to the fact that Yahoo has now been in the news a lot lately, as a result of it’s deal with Microsoft, and that may have led some to try out Yahoo search.

That could mean big changes for both the Bing and Google search engines. As Google tries to keep its hold on the search market, and as Bing tries to make significant gains, Internet marketing experts can expect to see significant changes in the way both search engines evaluate and organize search results. And that also mean that as the Bing engine reaches upwards of 20% of the search market share, it shouldn’t be ignored by any Internet marketing expert that really wants the best results.