A blog post on the adCenter Blog at Microsoft Advertising reports that the transition of organic (algorithmic, or non-paid search results) search results from the Yahoo! search engine to Bing has begun. Once the transition is complete, according to the post:
Bing will power 5.2 billion monthly searches… that’s 31.6% of the search market share in the U.S. (290 million monthly searches and 8.6% share in Canada).
Microsoft is predicting that it may take “approximately 24 months” to fully transition to Microsoft’s search platforms:
We will begin with the algorithmic search transition, with a goal of completing transition of at least the U.S. market by the end of 2010. We also hope to make significant progress transitioning U.S. advertisers and publishers in 2010 prior to the crucial holiday season, but may wait until 2011 if we determine that the transition will be more effective after the holiday season.
Microsoft and Yahoo! set up a Search Alliance website for more information.