Yahoo losing UK paid search market to Google
Q4 2008 showed an overall increase for paid search of 11% in the UK but Yahoo managed to lose a massive 40 per cent of revenues over that previous 12 months according to Efficient Frontier's Q4 Search Engine Performance Report. Yahoo's market share in Q4 2007 was 13.9% but by the same period in 2008 had dropped to just 8.4% - a very concerning trend for the once significant search giant.
Google of course was the search engine picking up the slack, it increased its' market share from 82.6% to 88.2% - by this point what seems an unstoppable dominant force in UK PPC search advertising.
A major contributor to the level of growth was a significant increase on Google's content network, which went up 3 fold year on year. Yahoo had admitted failure in Europe on its' content netowrk in January 2009 to focus on its search and display offerings.
If search advertisers look to diversify, such as through content networks, then Google will experience the most growth in this area, Yahoo's decision to abandon its content offering in Europe could prove to be a real problem for the search marketing company.
However against such a giant as Google, maybe a more focused approach from Yahoo will prove to be effective. Only time will tell.
