Yahoo! Gains Share
I bought Yahoo! stock about a month ago so I've been watching Yahoo! closely since then.
This morning Comscore Media Metrix reported in the July qsearch report that Yahoo! has gained search market share for the second month in a row. The gains are not huge but it’s a feat in itself to be gaining share in a market that has been going Google’s way for a long time.
Speaking of Google, they lost one point of search share in July. It would be interesting to know where Google is losing share and where Yahoo! is gaining share (demographic, geolocation, search terms, etc).
yesss
As a realtive play on Google - I think low 300's on Google and 40 on Yahoo would be a fair meeting for the two giants
Posted by: howard lindzon | August 21, 2006 at 11:46 PM
Time to change that picture - oy
Posted by: howard lindzon | August 21, 2006 at 11:47 PM
I bought YHOO shortly after reading your post on their drop. It's probably my most interesting stock recently, so thanks for the heads up!
Posted by: Todd Allen | August 22, 2006 at 02:14 AM
Hypothesis: Maybe Yahoo gained a little in Search just by redesigning their homepage. Each time they clean up & modernize they make us feel like we are valued users, so in turn we are likely to try some of the features of theirs we haven't yet tried, like news aggregation or Search.
Posted by: Karen E | August 22, 2006 at 07:02 AM
Can anyone really measure Google and yahoo traffic with a significance that would notice 1% change? Would you act upon 1% change in company sales? Its more of a comScore "here we are" story than significant search engine news.
Posted by: jack | August 22, 2006 at 08:12 AM
Good point Jack, but its not the point. Yahoo's asskicking has slowed a little.
Posted by: howard lindzon | August 22, 2006 at 09:26 AM
YHOO noted on its Q1 conf call that they believed that the third party data numbers were misleading. In tracking the revenue growth and approximate share stagnation / decrease you are left with the idea that pricing has jumped to a huge degree, which was not the case.
Google lost a point since the last month, but gained share on a yr/yr basis. YHOO gained slightly from last month but lost share on a yr/yr basis. There is a big gap of space in between where growth stock holders sell stocks and value stock holders buy shares. We saw a quick 20% dump in shares of YHOO following earnings, and this recovery (and subsequent expansion of its multiple) is based purely speculation. Note that GOOG has made more announcements that end up affecting the bottom line.
Catalysts for YHOO might be bigger over the next 5-6 months than they are for GOOG (new search product debuts earlier, more mobile announcements, major acquisition potential) but share dominance will remain in GOOG's favor over that period and beyond.
That said, market share on search should not the be the driving reason for a purchase or sale of either companies shares.
Posted by: Brian Bolan | August 22, 2006 at 10:43 AM
Ha!
Well I bought AMD when the ATI acquisition was announced - so there!
Posted by: Jackson | August 22, 2006 at 11:59 AM
I am now a faithful / regular reader of this blog. A VC who appreciates music (Steely Dan, Country, etc), doesn't follow the "Me Too" crowd in terms of making investments, and buys low when it comes to purchasing his own stock.
A VC who leads by example, practices what he preaches, and uses sound business and practical approaches.
Posted by: Jim Eiden | August 22, 2006 at 12:16 PM
I suspect Yahoo stepped ahead of Google in the area of search for adult photos and adult videos.
Any bets on how long it will be before advertisers start spending serious money for product placements, ads, etc. connected with adult photos and adult videos?
Advertiser supported porn may be one of the rare trends that starts in Europe (France), then to England, then to Vegas, SF, Hollywood, LA, NYC, etc.
Posted by: cfw | August 22, 2006 at 04:19 PM
Not so fast – Google’s market share was up!
I think you will find this data point to be of interest.
In contrast to the two reports issued by comScore and Hitwise, Compete’s data indicates that Google’s market share actually increased by ½ a percent in July.
Why the discrepancy between the three reports? comScore, Hitwise and Compete all leverage different data sources and apply different methodologies to their data sets. In terms of Compete, our report is derived from a comprehensive database of the daily web search queries of 2M opt-in U.S. consumers across the top search engines. Compete’s market share report is based on the volume of ‘web searches’ conducted on each property - which excludes dedicated image, video and news searches.
For more, visit: http://blog.compete.com/index.php/2006/08/23/google-search-market-share/
Posted by: Jay Meattle | August 23, 2006 at 04:46 PM