There’s another hot topic over at Webmaster World regarding the latest development on the Yahoo-Microsoft Merger. Apparently, after its failed attempt to take over the online media giant, Microsoft is exploring alternatives that would let them own a part of Yahoo, but not acquire of all of Yahoo. The story was also featured in CNN.

SEO people have mixed feelings about this deal, and it’s understandable why. While the merger (or semi-merger) seems to be benign to the current SEO landscape, a close inspection may reveal otherwise. We’ve been reading up on how this new Microsoft-Yahoo dynamic can affect rankings and “acceptable” SEO practices, and here are some of the insights we thought might be worth sharing:

Microsoft may pool Yahoo’s search algorithms to come up with something that really rivals Google’s search technology. This poses a threat for Google in the long term, as a Microsoft-owned Yahoo would obviously have a ready (and big) market share. The combined search volume of MSN and Yahoo will make up around 35% of search volume – and that’s a serious rival to Google’s 60%. Some SEO experts say that the effect might not be felt in UK (where Google is too far ahead of the competition), but may cause a lot of shakes in the US, where Yahoo is also widely used.

There are also speculations that affiliate marketers may be hit by the new dynamic – especially marketers who have been relying on Microsoft’s poor ranking technology to get traffic. They may lose their search market share.

Finally, there are theories that newer sites may be better off optimizing for a Microsoft-owned Yahoo, which is expected to be friendlier to newbies (as opposed to Google, which has a reputation for favoring established sites). Some SEO people have been doing the math and figure that focusing their efforts on getting better ranks in the MSN-Yahoo index is more cost-effective in the longer run.

Whether Google will lose its stranglehold on the search engine marketing and optimization market because of the planned Microsoft-Yahoo merger is yet to be seen. What we are sure of is this: Solid white-hat SEO practices will continue to be the foundation of search technology, so we’ll stick to doing those.