Yahoo gave away 0.6 percent of US search engine market share in March 2007, with Google and Microsoft gaining at Yahoo’s expense by comScore’s numbers. Higher expenses in the first quarter led to shares of YHOO sinking after hours.
Yahoo Search Drops, As Does Its Stock
Yahoo executives have been advising observers that the impact of their new Panama search advertising system won’t truly be reflected in the company’s numbers right away. Net income spiraled down 11 percent to $142 million from the same quarter in 2006, according to figures announced by the company today.
Investors who had pushed shares of Yahoo up to 32.09 in trading began taking some of their enthusiasm back. At press time, Yahoo had dropped to 29.53, which makes it look like some people had hoped Yahoo CEO Terry Semel’s cautionary remarks about Panama were a smokescreen.
In the search world, Yahoo’s decline in the US search market per comScore’s numbers saw it drop to 27.5 percent of US queries.
Google ticked upward to 48.3 percent, while Microsoft’s gain nudged it to 10.9 percent. Ask moved up to 5.2, while AOL rose to 5 percent.
“Americans conducted 7.3 billion searches online in March, up 6 percent versus February and 14 percent versus March 2006,” comScore said in its report.
Google Sites led the pack with 3.5 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (2.0 billion), Microsoft Sites (798 million), Ask Network (379 million), and Time Warner Network (368 million).
