Bada Boom, Bada… Well, You Know the Rest

In the past 2 months since Microsoft's search engine Bing decided to make its presence known in the world of search engines, we have seen some definite changes in the market.  While Google is still King in the land of search, Bing has started its own tiny village modeled to take up the lowly position of Prince.  Since Google came onto the scene, Yahoo has enjoyed being second best and maintaining that position with little competition until the Big Bing Theory came along.  It is hard to make an argument that Bing provides more relevant search results or that it has more useful features, Bing is doing what MSN and Live could never do...  That is to appear younger, more relevant, and easier to use.

We see the strategy being constantly used by Apple whenever it comes out with a new notebook, Ipod, or Iphone.  They manage to make people feel that even though their current Apple product (or Yahoo in this case) is just as efficient it has lost its "coolness" factor and sexy appeal.  Of course the big difference between Microsoft and Apple is that Microsoft has to try to do it (with huge amounts of marketing) while Apple just does it.  Microsoft is pulling off the same paid strategy with Bing but it seems to actually be working against Yahoo. 

So what are the issues that Yahoo faces besides the huge marketing power of MIcrosoft?  Well, let's list them off:

1. Instead of advertising its search engine, Yahoo is making news for all the wrong reasons.  It recently came out that Carol Bartz (CEO of Yahoo) has sold over $2 million in shares.  That combined with several other executives exercising the same power, morale is low and so is confidence in the company.
2. The "partnership" between Yahoo and Microsoft on Pay Per Click ads made every PPC Specialist shudder.  If Yahoo had to rely on Microsoft for some of its search engine technology, why not just go straight to the source?
3. The lack of new technology and features currently coming from the Yahoo camp.  It is hard for me to say Yahoo knows what they are doing when their Fantasy Football program is the main reason I visit the site anymore.
4. Yahoo is looking very old...  A lot of the features I see being advertised by Bing are either carried over or regurgitated from past search engines but have been highlighted much more effectively (the website preview window, different ecommerce uses, etc).  Yahoo already has some of these features available (so does Google) but the average user doesn't even know it.  If the technology is there but people don't know it, your search engine is going to look outdated very quickly.

I don't want this to be taken as a personal slam on Yahoo but it is hard for me to sit back and watch this company crumble (when I know its actually a great search engine!).  In the world of SEO, it can be easy to overreact about some new search engine coming out when there isn't much cause for it (look at Wolfram Alpha).  It might not be a huge deal in the world of SEO but if I was one of the 13,500 employees at Yahoo, it may be cause for concern...