Turning Yahoo! into Bing in Australia

At long last, there is now something concrete on what the Yahoo!/Bing search deal means for Australia. Just today Yahoo! sent an email outlining the change from Yahoo!7 to Bing in Australia. According to the email, the changes to Yahoo!7’s organic search are going to happen this month:

In Australia, we expect to transition Yahoo!7’s organic search results (the non-paid listings found on the main body of the page) to Microsoft during January 2011.

The change in their paid listings is coming later in the year:

The transition of your paid search account to Microsoft technology is scheduled to take place in the second half of 2011.

For months now both Yahoo! and Microsoft’s blogs have been discussing the change and how to switch over for the USA and Canada. In those markets, the deadline for transitioning from Yahoo! to Microsoft Adcenter was today.

Here in Australia, we should be able to expect the same level of information during the transition period, as outlined in today’s email:

Approximately three months prior to the transition of your paid search account, we will begin sharing more detailed information with you, to help you prepare for the changes to come. Until then, please continue to manage your Yahoo! Search Marketing account as usual.

There will be one important difference between the switch in the states and here in Australia; Microsoft Adcenter is not active locally. To date Bing’s paid listings have been driven by Yahoo! Search Marketing. Personally I expect to see Microsoft Adcenter introduced into Australia well before the changeover date, to allow Yahoo!’s current Search Engine Marketing customers to migrate their campaigns across.

Other than a change of interface, there will not be any real change in how the SEM marketplace operates in Australia. Unlike in other markets, where they have gone from three to two SEM products, Australia has only had Yahoo! Search Marketing and Adwords. This deal does mean the final end to the SEM product that Overture (Previously Goto) spawned, and that, at least, is significant.