Bing is officially powering AOL search as of January 1st, following a long-term deal made by the two companies back in June. Rick van der Kooi, Corporate VP of Microsoft Search Advertising, states:
“Today, I am excited to share that as of Jan. 1, Bing powers AOL’s web, mobile, and tablet search, providing paid search ads and algorithmic organic search results to AOL’s properties worldwide.”
Van der Kooi illustrates the scale of the partnership by breaking it down into numbers:
- 1 in 5 searches happens on Bing.com
- Bing also powers search results for third largest search provider in the US (Yahoo)
- With Bing now powering AOL searches, the company powers close to one-third of US PC web searches
In addition, Bing can also benefit from the built-in audience currently generating billions of search queries a year for AOL.
Bing’s deal with AOL is different than its current deal with Yahoo, in the sense that it will be powering 100% of AOL’s search results across all devices. Only 51% of Yahoo’s desktop search results are powered by Bing, not taking into account mobile at all.
It’s also interesting to note that Google once had a similar deal with AOL, dating as far back as 2002. Bing essentially replaced Google as AOL’s default search provider, but it’s not know if Google ever had any intention of renewing the deal.
Image Credit: GongTo / Shutterstock.com
