BT Yahoo! Search in UK is now powered by Google
More changes are a foot in the lucrative search marketing arena as BT Yahoo! jumps into bed with Google - BT Yahoo! is now using the Google search results for both its organic and pay per click results.
That’s right, BT’s portal which is branded Yahoo! is using Google… not Bing.
I have to wonder what Microsoft think of this arrangement in light of their big partnership announcement hooking up Yahoo and Bing in the USA.
To be perfectly frank, I cannot imagine Microsoft are very worried about the BT deal.
Keep in mind that Google is only powering the results in the BT! Yahoo portal offered to BT Broadband users, not the main Yahoo UK and Ireland site.
On the one hand, BT remains the UK’s largest broadband provider with 4.8 million broadband customers, or 35% of the DSL broadband market share. It doesn’t follow, however, that these BT customers are then using the BT Yahoo! portal for searching.
I took a look at Compete’s data for Yahoo subdomains and to be honest the BT numbers aren’t all that impressive.
Internationally, Yahoo! search can claim some big numbers, with 78 million visitors last month using search.yahoo.com
Looking at the British Yahoo! properties, however, we see only 21,291 unique visitors using the UK property ( bt.yahoo.com ) in the month of July 2009.
By way of comparison, google.co.uk had 910,000 unique visitors in the same period.
The Brits aren’t using the BT Yahoo! service, apparently preferring Yahoo’s other UK properties:
- 1.3 million using uk.answers.yahoo.com
- 262,000 using uk.news.yahoo.com
- 238,000 using uk.eurosport.yahoo.com
- 223,000 using uk.yahoo.com
Conclusion?
Google keeps nibbling away, growing its market share. Getting a major ISP on it’s side certainly won’t hurt. But BT isn’t a major player, and I don’t see this changing search marketing strategies in any big way.
.
