18 June 2008
But after months of uncertainty, things could be looking up for Yahoo - and no, we're not talking about its new paid search partnership with Google. New figures from comScore show that traffic to yahoo.co.uk enjoyed a significant upturn in May 2008 - especially compared with the same period in 2007, as the graphs below display.
Take a look at the 2008 graph and you'll see that traffic to Yahoo UK (and Ireland - don't they know we're separate countries?) rises at the expense of traffic to yahoo.com.
What could be the reason for this mysterious shift? Have Yahoo suddenly won the hearts and minds of British searchers in the space of a short few months? And have US Yahoos done something to mortally offend their dedicated followers?
The answer is actually much simpler. Here at bigmouthmedia, we noticed that from mid-May, Yahoo! started to redirect its UK users who typed in www.yahoo.com to uk.yahoo.com. The result: a swift rise in traffic to Yahoo UK & Ireland.
Yahoo currently lags behind Google in the UK in dramatic fashion - Hitwise statistics from May show that google.co.uk received 73.42% of UK search volume in May, with google.com on 13.86% - Yahoo notched up just 3.21%. So the new redirection strategy could be an effective way of boosting the number of searches made on uk.yahoo.com over the next few months.
However, what's certain is that this is no long term solution to Yahoo's flailing fortunes. It'll take a lot more for it to regain valuable market share in the UK - and with so much at stake, they'll need to come up with a viable strategy sooner rather than later.
Yahoo.co.uk traffic going up in May
Poor old Yahoo - it's been a tough year for the search engine pioneers. First Terry Semel left the ranks of the online veteran, then its future as an independent firm was cast into doubt by a potential Microsoft takeover.But after months of uncertainty, things could be looking up for Yahoo - and no, we're not talking about its new paid search partnership with Google. New figures from comScore show that traffic to yahoo.co.uk enjoyed a significant upturn in May 2008 - especially compared with the same period in 2007, as the graphs below display.
Take a look at the 2008 graph and you'll see that traffic to Yahoo UK (and Ireland - don't they know we're separate countries?) rises at the expense of traffic to yahoo.com.
What could be the reason for this mysterious shift? Have Yahoo suddenly won the hearts and minds of British searchers in the space of a short few months? And have US Yahoos done something to mortally offend their dedicated followers?
The answer is actually much simpler. Here at bigmouthmedia, we noticed that from mid-May, Yahoo! started to redirect its UK users who typed in www.yahoo.com to uk.yahoo.com. The result: a swift rise in traffic to Yahoo UK & Ireland.
Yahoo currently lags behind Google in the UK in dramatic fashion - Hitwise statistics from May show that google.co.uk received 73.42% of UK search volume in May, with google.com on 13.86% - Yahoo notched up just 3.21%. So the new redirection strategy could be an effective way of boosting the number of searches made on uk.yahoo.com over the next few months.
However, what's certain is that this is no long term solution to Yahoo's flailing fortunes. It'll take a lot more for it to regain valuable market share in the UK - and with so much at stake, they'll need to come up with a viable strategy sooner rather than later.
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