Microsoft and Yahoo came to terms this week on a deal to share search and paid search technology. How will this affect domain parking and income? There are a lot of opinions out there.
Andrew Allemann thinks it is a good thing for domainers. His point-of-view is that an allied Microsoft-Yahoo will be a stronger competitor to Google. In an earlier article he expressed some misgivings, stating that “The scary thing is that parking companies that use a Yahoo feed will now have to negotiate with Microsoft. It means new relationships with a company that has a reputation for being tough negotiators.”
I agree that this is a concern, but it is certainly in Microsoft’s interest to compete strongly with Google. The last thing they need is for parking companies to abandon their feed in favor of Google’s. The time frame looks this way:
Organic search (the non-paid listings) are scheduled to be combined by Spring of 2010. Microsoft’s new Bing! search engine will supply the results to Yahoo and Yahoo will be in charge of spiffing-up the interface and deciding how to present the results to users. Don’t expect to just see a Bing! clone on Yahoo.
Paid Search is not expected to be combined until early 2011. Paid search consists of the “Sponsored Listings” that appear above and to the right of search results in many places. Paid search also powers domain parking companies.
This schedule means that we will have plenty of time to digest these changes as they are rolled-out. After thinking this through I agree with Andrew that this is probably a good thing for domainers and for domain parking and monetization in particular – as long as Microsoft and Google don’t make the next deal.
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