WSJ: Yahoo Getting Unfair Shake In Wake Of Search Deal

An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning makes the case that investors have overly punished Yahoo for its “no-cash-upfront” search deal with Microsoft. The piece cites continued growth in Yahoo uniques and page views and the myriad Yahoo properties that are at the top of their respective categories:

Despite all the turmoil at the company, the number of unique monthly visitors to Yahoo sites continues to grow. It rose 10% in the year to June to 154 million, according to comScore, 79.5% of the total U.S. Internet audience and only a little below Google in terms of reach. Microsoft, No. 3 in reach, is well below, at 66%. Most of Yahoo’s departments, including email, news, Yahoo Answers, sports, finance and entertainment also are growing in double-digit percentage terms. Internationally, Yahoo’s traffic is up although not as much as the overall Internet audience.

GigaOM also used comScore data to recently show that Yahoo remains a force to be reckoned with across a very large range of verticals, from news to finance, games and sports, among others.

While display ad revenues have been weak for the past few quarters, and thus Yahoo revenues have suffered there, the market has arguably been myopically fixated on search and ignoring other strengths that Yahoo has, as CEO Bartz has been trying to point out.

In addition, there is now some evidence that display ad revenues are starting to recover as more large advertisers are starting to move more of their budgets online. This is where Yahoo is seeking to concentrate more of its energies.