Yahoo! (YHOO) rebound becomes more hopeless as search share slips

Posted Dec 22nd 2007 6:40PM by Douglas McIntyre
Filed under: Bad News, Industry, Consumer Experience, Competitive Strategy, Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO)

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) has had several opportunities to "fix" itself recently. One was its new Panama search technology. Shareholders were eager to see it work as a better competitor to Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). So far, it has barely moved the needle.

Some analysts hoped that the company's new management would cut costs to improve margins. A figure of 20% of the staff has been suggested. But, if anyone at Yahoo! has been pushed out beyond a few management types, no one knows about it.

Yahoo!'s hopes now appear to ride on the back of better targeting for online display ads. Delivering marketing messages based on the user's behavior is the "next big thing" for internet advertising. Unfortunately, other web portals and Google have their own ad-serving and behavior-targeting products.

What the problem boils down to is that the market still tends to value Yahoo! on its ability to get consumers to use it to search the internet. Yahoo!'s piece of the search market is a proxy for its success or failure.

The new comScore search engine figures for November are out, and Yahoo!'s piece of that market fell .4% to 22.4% from October. It may not seem a lot, but at this rate, it would not be many months before Yahoo!'s share of market falls below 20%.

Yahoo! stock is having trouble holding $24. In late October, things seemed more promising and Wall Street believed the company would do something significant to change its business for the better. The stock traded at $33.99.

It won't be back there again soon.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Tags: comScore, GOOG, Google, Panama, Yahoo!, YHOO

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

12-22-2007 @ 9:23PM

Icheb said...

"Yahoo!'s piece of that market fell .4% to 22.4% from October"

That would be .4 PERCENTAGE POINTS, NOT percent. Go back to school and learn math.

12-23-2007 @ 5:00AM

Jake said...

What shoddy and selective analysis. Yahoo's stake in Alibaba's IPO was $1 billion? What about its entire stake in the Alibaba Group, Yahoo Japan, Gmarket and the rest of its incredible investments? Those alone are worth about half its share price at this point -- and it's going to keep growing. Internet advertising is in its infancy and Yahoo has the most viewed websites in the world. Google may be Coca Cola, but Yahoo is Pepsi. Come back to this post in a year McIntyre, when the stock has risen to 34 minimum, and apologize to your readers gullible enough to believe your crap.

12-22-2007 @ 11:08PM

chule said...

Do you really belive it is hopeless?
http://www.spymac.com/details/?2319811

12-23-2007 @ 5:16AM

douglas mcintyre said...

All of those investments have been taken into account. Yahoo! would still have a market cap of $25 billion if those were backed out. The have little strategic value, and are illiquid

12-23-2007 @ 8:18AM

Anime Girl said...

This is the most biased crappy article I have ever read. Why don't you admit that your a Google shareholder and your just spewing crap to try to hurt yahoo more? Plus your stuff doesn't even hold up under light scrutiny. Yahoo's search has greatly improved, and I use it more than Google now. Yahoo will take market share from Gooogle especially since Google's search results are becomming more and more spammy. Just look at the top of almost every search - Wikipedia comes up #1 or close to it. I call it Wikispam. And there are far worse spammy links throughout google serps. Google is the one that will be loosing share shortly not Yahoo.

12-23-2007 @ 8:38PM

Icheb said...

You call that Wikispam and I call you a dumbass, just like the guy who can't distinguish percent and percentage points.

SPAM is UNWANTED content, whereas Wikipedia provides useful information and a good user experience, which Google is all for. Don't comment on stuff you have no fucking clue about.

12-23-2007 @ 8:19AM