It’s worse than a soap opera. Software giant finds search engine partner, software giant loses search engine partner, search engine partner finds search engine giant, search engine partner reconsiders software giant offer, search engine giant and search engine partner forge close ties in preparation for the walk into the sunset.

The Microsoft-Yahoo! on-again, off-again talks have been analysed here before so this is now the latest twist to the evolving tale. Following their limited trials of partnering their online search results so that they displayed Google ads the two search companies have now announced that they are ready to take their mating dance to the next level. No, not quite kids, a dog and domestic bliss but Yahoo! has given up the fight for online ads following the lacklustre show of their Panama system and will now display Google Ads alongside their search results.

For website owners active in PPC campaigns this means that they now have something like 87% - 90% of the online search world covered and for those who use Google Ads to monetize their websites the potential to earn more has now got much better with more ads and more choice for their website visitors than ever before (or at least that will be the case when the deal goes live in three months’ time).

How does this affect SEO efforts and the need for a website to perform well in the searches of all three major search engines? In terms of SEO the changes are minimal. Yahoo! may be able to throw more resources at its search engine algorithm and become capable of attracting a larger share of the online search pie in terms of numbers but, at odds with Google and its exotic nature, Yahoo! is firmly wedded to a business model that increases the number of people it attracts to its search engine through partnership deals with software manufacturers (which offer the Yahoo! toolbar) and a convergence between online media content and news as an attraction to its search engine portal.

Google will continue to do what Google does best: to offer the fastest, most relevant in terms of search results, most popular search engine on the planet. If you are running a website on a shoestring budget and are struggling with resources your priorities should be: optimise for Google first (your site’s survival depends on it) and then Yahoo! Don’t omit MSN in case they succeed in surprising us all (after all they do have the R & D budget for it) but don’t lose much sleep either. Figures from websites we have optimised to perform equally well on all three search engines show that even with keywords bringing website results in the first page of MSN, the MSN search engine delivers less than 4% of monthly traffic.