Yahoo! improves advertising client base

While the client base of advertisers for Google declines and MSN falls further, Yahoo!'s market share has increased, a new report has shown.

Research from AdGooroo, based on the advertisements brought up by searches of 526,000 keywords, found that for the second quarter of 2008 Google's base was down 6.4 per cent on the previous three months and 8.5 per cent against the preceding year.

Microsoft has previously warned that its advertising base has decreased since its attempt to purchase Yahoo! and this was borne out in the results, which showed a decrease of 20 per cent over the last quarter - a 6.7 per cent drop over the year.

In contrast, Yahoo!'s client base rose by 0.03 per cent, the AdGooroo data showed, making an annual increase in search advertising of 9.8 per cent.

President of AdGooroo Rich Stokes said search marketing has been described as "being recession-proof, as it has arguably proven itself as the most effective form of advertising".

Writing for online resource Search Engine Watch in response to the new figures, search engine optimisation expert Nathania Johnson commented that Yahoo! "could use some good news right now", adding that MSN's decrease was "not really a surprise".