14 DAY TRIAL // A recent comScore study showed that the popularity that Yahoo! is enjoying in the UK is growing smaller with each month. The websites of the search engine were used by merely 4.3% of the Britons in June. The stats from May showed that Yahoo!'s share of the search market had risen to 4.7% of the audience. Nevertheless, it was Yahoo!'s drop in popularity from May to June that was the most significant among the top ten search websites.
Google sites accounted for 75.3% of the market, 0.5% up compared with the previous month. Considering the difference between the first ranked and the other finalists, it sure seems like the giant could hold onto the first place in people's preferences even if the team of developers did not come up with something new for years in a row.
As far as the British market is concerned, one interesting aspect was that related to the website that came in second - since the first ranked was the same as in most countries. eBay totaled a 5.5% rate of the entire search market and took Yahoo!'s place of first runner-up, a position occupied by the Sunnyvale company in most territories.
The recent developments on the search market in the UK are bound to attract international attention given the latest surge in the numbers of Internet users. In June, the total number of searches reached 3.9 billion, as 31 million people used the Internet at least once in order to find answers to some of their queries. From all Internet users, those who conducted searches were most active, the average number of searches per month being of 124. This means that, during an online session, the average number of searches was of 4.1.
From what the numbers indicate, Yahoo! seems to be losing ground, no matter the field where it is competing, and this could be just a reflection of internal issues the company is facing. The proxy fight initiated by the activist investor Carl Icahn cast a shadow on matters of stability within the company itself. This translated into a drop in the price of shares, which are now estimated at around $20, meaning $13 less than what Microsoft offered a few months ago.