In its earnings report for the first quarter of 2012, Yahoo reported that its revenue from search increased 3 percent from the same period in 2011. Meanwhile, its revenue from search grew 8 percent from the beginning of 2011 .
Recently appointed Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson said that the company is encouraged about the upswing. Thompson reported that traffic to Yahoo-owned website increased both in terms of unique visitors (7 percent) and page views (10 percent) compared to the first quarter of 2011.
Since Thompson took over for Carol Bartz, many have speculated about his plans for the company in terms of potential partnerships or product eliminations. TechCrunch reported that the adjustments may be similar to those at Apple, moving toward the refinement of a few core products rather than expansion into new areas.
For Yahoo, there is no product more at its core than search with the company being among the first to dominate the industry in late 90s and into the 2000s. However, it is quickly moving toward obsolescence, with Google fielding nearly two-thirds of all search queries for most of the last year. What’s more is that Bing, Yahoo’s partner in search, has grabbed ahold of the largest portion of market share not held by Google.
Nonetheless, marketers might not want to write Yahoo off as a search portal since the company’s increased search revenue suggests it might be focusing on this services over other products under Thompson’s rule.
One such product Thompson opted to fold up was Meme. Brafton recently reported that the company’s little-known social media service will no longer be supported after three relatively anonymous years on the market.
