Yahoo and Bing SERPs are IDENTICAL!? How Can That Be?

[Sally Stitts]

So I typed in my most recent "4-word search obsession", and Google gives me the #1 position (and 2 and 3). Great.

Then I tried Bing and Yahoo Search, and to my surprise, the results were identical -

a closely related page was found in -
position 3 on page 1, and
position 6 on page 4.

The entire results were exactly the same between Bing and Yahoo searches.

Whose original SERPs, and who is copying?
Bing does the ads and Yahoo does the search? Wasn't that the deal?
.

[walkman]

I think you are mistaken, Bing powers Yahoo Serps. Otherwise it makes no sense for Yahoo. The real expense is in search (engineers, datacenters etc)

[kads]

bing powers yahoo search.......

[Sally Stitts]

Noooo, Yahoo powers Bing search. Bing powers Yahoo ads.

I checked again today.
If you don't believe it, just try any search term. Compare the last result on page 5 of Yahoo, then Microsoft. There you are.

Yahoo and Microsoft SERPS have been IDENTICAL for many months now.
The deal was, and is -
Yahoo provides the SERPS for BOTH Yahoo and Microsoft.
Microsoft provides the ADS for BOTH Yahoo and Microsoft.

Today, I also noticed that Yahoo has censored their SERPS - my recent popular page on Google page 1 cannot be found on Yahoo (and Microsoft) SERPS. Something about "you can't say anything bad about a large company, EVEN IF IT IS TRUE, if you are a peon. Well, peon Yahoo - they have it wrong, and Google has it right.

The same is true for image search -
Google search for bigcompany sucks = 105,000 results
Microsoft search for bigcompany sucks = 271 results.

Not only do we now have just 2 SERPS, when we used to have 3, but half of those results are heavily censored. Yahoo has been going straight downhill for years now. This latest result confirms their continuing quest for irrelevance.

GOOGLE RULES!
.

[koan]

Noooo, Yahoo powers Bing search. Bing powers Yahoo ads.

You've been corrected previously. Bing powers Yahoo's search results. Yahoo! has given up. Just search for "Yahoo! Bing merger"

[Sally Stitts]

Thank you. Right on. Where have I been?
Checked it out at searchengineland, highly respected.
I just can't keep up.

Can I get 1 point for my "identical SERPs" statement?
Or can someone contradict that as well.
Always identical for me.
Cheers.
.

[lucy24]

I remember when I discovered this by accident (investigating Metacrawler, I think), and didn't mention it because I assumed it was something everyone else already knew. Oops. I call them Yahoo/Bing to distinguish from g###.

Can anyone hazard a guess why both robots (bingbot and Yahoo! Slurp from separate IPs) are still working in tandem, when they're both feeding into the same results?

[Robert Charlton]

Sally - From time to time, I've also been surprised by some of the similarities I've seen. That said, I've also seen many significant differences on searches I'm familiar with.

Bing, eg, appears to give an almost ridiculous amount of weight to a domain name, and it seems to be a poor judge of inbound link quality. Google has a much larger index, and appears to dig more deeply into page content.

It sounds like you haven't seen this thread, prompted by a SearchEngineLand story, which popped up in February 2011. On the surface, it gives some credence to your thoughts....

Google Sting Exposes "Copying" by Bing
http://www.webmasterworld.com/msn_microsoft_search/4261201.htm [webmasterworld.com]

A few days later, SearchEngineLand published a discussion of Bing's response... Bing: Why Google’s Wrong In Its Accusations [searchengineland.com]

I've seen enough differences that I'm convinced that Bing isn't borrowing. Obviously though, both engines check each other out and don't ignore obvious hints, but there's no one-to-one direct influence on individual searches.