I reported Last week that the Yahoo and Microsoft search deal has been approved in the US and Europe. Microsoft will supply all results seen when searching Yahoo, for both paid and natural listings. Obviously there are huge technological issues to work through, but if all goes as planned, the partnership could be visible to consumers as soon as late 2010. Yahoo and Microsoft have also setup a site to explain the partnership in more detail.

So, what does this change mean for your business?

Yahoo and Microsoft currently combine for a little under 30% of the search market. Individually they don’t come close to challenging Google, but combined, they represent a sizable portion of the market. If you have been focusing your SEM and/or SEO efforts solely on Google, it may now be time to start paying attention to Yahoo/Microsoft.

It remains to be seen if this partnership will be able to steal a share of the search market from Google. Even at 30%, if you aren’t including Yahoo/Microsoft in your SEM and SEO plans, you could be missing out on a significant number of customers. This partnership makes reaching the non-Google searchers much more efficient for advertisers.