Yahoo! Search Now Completely Powered by Bing, Except in Korea

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Yahoo! has completely moved out of the search business, at least in terms of the engine that powers search queries and results. The company reports near completion of its migration to Microsoft Bing organic searches worldwide.

Do a Yahoo! search on your desktop or mobile device and results will now be delivered through Microsoft Bing’s search technology. While this has been a feature in some markets since Yahoo! first switched to Bing search in August 2010, the company reports that it has almost completed its move to Bing organic searches except in one market: South Korea.

Yahoo! decided to switch over to Microsoft’s Bing technology in gradual phases to ensure that quality and consistency is met in all markets. VP of search engineering Kartik Ramakrishnan says the switch to Bing isn’t as simple as porting everything to Microsoft’s technology via API. Technical integration had to likewise spill over to Yahoo!’s various syndication partners worldwide.

Further, Yahoo! had to ensure that user experience is consistent across all devices and in all markets, given differences in interface depending on language and country. Yahoo! likewise had to migrate Yahoo! Site Explorer users to Bing Webmaster.

South Korea is a different case, though, since migration would have to involve the local search engine Daum, which powers Yahoo! search in that market. Still, for the rest of the world, Yahoo! organic searches are now powered by Bing, which means a bigger slice of the search market for Microsoft.