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A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion about future of Yahoo's SearchMonkey and BOSS tools, specifically after the Microsoft & Yahoo deal, where Yahoo is pretty much giving up on search technology.
If this is a concern for you, i.e. will SearchMonkey, BOSS, Site Explorer and so on, be around in a year or two from now, then you should read on. In fact, Vanessa Fox covered these questions in detail at Search Engine Land.
To make a long story short, we honestly do not know. Yahoo doesn't know, Microsoft doesn't know, I don't know and you don't know. I can still see SearchMonkey, BOSS, Site Explorer all working with Microsoft's Bing, but will Yahoo continue to invest in those tools? I don't know. It is clear to me that Yahoo wants to cut most, if not all, of their spending on search. So if that is true, which I think is, then Microsoft would have to pick up the technologies behind those tools.
Will they? I don't know. I can honestly seeing all three of these tools being forgotten in two years from now. Maybe some form of "Bing" tool will come out to replace them, but will they replicate all the features? I doubt it.
The truth is, I don't know. If I had to guess, in two years, we won't have a SearchMonkey, BOSS, or Site Explorer. I am not sure if we will have something equivalent from Microsoft Bing.
Should we start worrying about it now? I am not sure if that would do any of us any good. Clearly, Microsoft is reading this and know that these tools and features are something that webmasters and SEOs treasure.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Jay
07/31/2009 03:02 pm
I think Microsoft might have something up their sleeve. Rest assure they have done the research for longer than we know. I'm sure they understand how important search is for business.
Michael Martinez
07/31/2009 05:06 pm
People in the SEO community can communicate their concerns to the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust unit. Cf. http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/newcase.htm European SEOs may be able to do something similar with the EU: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/index_en.html
dean
07/31/2009 05:09 pm
I think it presents a tremendous opportunity for MS. If they were to keep and develop on the yahoo tools, they could create a relationship with webmasters and develop a channel for communications and transparency. Let's face it if they keep webmasters happy then the chances of us being advocates for binghoo would greatly increase.
Michael Martinez
07/31/2009 08:43 pm
I seriously doubt Steve Ballmer is interested in helping Webmasters and SEOs. He has structured a deal to boost Microsoft's advertising revenues. This is really all about advertising.
No Name
08/03/2009 04:59 pm
I think they're going to have similar tools or maybe improve the ones that Yahoo already have. If they help the webmasters they could potentially bring the clients to advertise which is what Google is currently doing. Its a competition so I'm sure they'll try to match up.
MGA
08/03/2009 09:37 pm
what i know is since the merge, yahoo search engine department is wasting their time with table tennis. How i know, because my friend is working there... We shouldn't expect things to be same...