According to an email from Yahoo (shown left) Bing powered results are now being tested on Yahoo’s live engine.Search Engine RoundTable mentioned offline testing being done some time back:
Did you know that Bing is already or will very soon begin testing powering Yahoo’s search results? Yes, in Yahoo Search, you should technically see the same organic results that you would see in Bing – possibly any day now. Of course, this is being tested and you and I may not see it, while your neighbor may see it. This should be in testing mode right now.
When will Yahoo switch completely over to Bing? Either in August or September of this year. That obviously assumes that the tests go well. But we are looking for an August or September 2010 transition on the organic side of Yahoo to Microsoft search.
Here is a slide from the presentation that shares those details:
Search Engine Land verified that:
This month, Yahoo will begin testing search results, both paid and organic, on live Yahoo Search queries. Yahoo said the “testing volumes will fluctuate during this period” and they will make sure to keep “paid search volume in particular kept low,” as to not impact advertisers.
So keep your eyes open for Bing search results on Yahoo as soon as today.
The switch over will be sometime in August or September, and possibly later, if the testing does not go well.
Yahoo played up the importance of this change saying that according to comScore, Bing will ultimately power 30% of the search queries globally on both paid and organic search.
It’s hoped that a Bing powered Yahoo will go a long way towards balancing the very uneven scales in the search engine battle.