When Yahoo and Microsoft announced their Search Alliance in July 2009, only the high level agreement details were available:

• Microsoft will provide the development and management of search engine results technology (bing)
• Microsoft will provide the search and content network ad platform (adCenter)
• Microsoft will manage the relationship with self-service advertisers
• Yahoo will manage the relationship with large accounts
• Yahoo will provide their own user interface on top of the Bing results which will appear on Yahoo properties

Now that US and EU regulators have approved the deal, search marketers need to assess which Yahoo tools they rely on – and need to be prepared with alternatives should these tools be discontinued.

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It may seem like a cliché but on the web no website is an island. Any site worth its salt will have accumulated inbound links and will most certainly contain outbound links to other resources on the web. Indeed, one can easily say that without links to interconnect websites, there wouldn’t be a worldwide web.

For search engines, such as Google, incoming links provide a strong signal as to the authority of a website. If multiple websites link to a specific website for a given topic, there is a good chance the website cited by others is deemed to be highly relevant for a good reason. Google and other search engines identify the theme of a website page by analyzing a page’s content and the text of the incoming links – the underlined text you click on to arrive at a page. Links, especially inbound links, are thus one of the most significant in the over 200 factors Google considers in its ranking algorithms. Inbound links from related sites in a business’ sector are also an excellent source of highly qualified direct traffic.

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