There is a new Search Alliance on the horizon, which basically means Bing taking over the provision of search results and advertisements on Yahoo! sites. This process of integration is taking place in North America. However in Japan, Google has announced in its Japanese blog that Google will be powering Yahoo! Japan Search and providing the advertisements, not Bing.
Yahoo! Japan is the big beast in Japan’s internet landscape. Yahoo! is the most popular search engine reaching around 60% of the market. It is the most popular portal site, as well as being the biggest online auction company, and one of the most popular blogging platforms. It’s a bit like an amalgamation of Google and eBay in other countries.
I’m no SEO expert, so it should be no surprise that I still scratch my head when I use Bing, and given the importance of Yahoo! in Japan, I was a little worried that I may lose some of the (few) visitors who come to this site via Yahoo! Thankfully that case seems to be averted. I generally do better in Google, so in actual fact, it’s pretty good news.