To compute the value of intent, it is necessary to first come up with a measure of what each individual user is worth to Yahoo and Google, respectively. According to comScore, Yahoo logged 196.6 million unique users in July. Revenue for this period hasn’t been reported yet, but Yahoo’s revenue in the 3 months ending June 30 was $1.135.24 billion. Divided by three, that yields a monthly revenue of $378.33 million. Divide this figure by the number of Yahoo’s users in July, and the revenue per unique user adds up to $1.94.
In Google’s case, revenue for the 3 months ending June 30 was $14,105 billion, or $4.701 billon per month. Divided by the 192.3 million unique users reported in June, Google’s revenue per unique user was $24.45.While the figures above are not exact (given July 2013 financials are not yet available), this is a stunning disparity. Google’s users yield about 12 times the revenue that Yahoo’s do. And there is very little that Yahoo’s recent acquisitions (notably Tumblr) will do to change this ratio.
Search engines yield more revenue to their owners because the advertisers who pay the bills are willing to pay a lot of money — sometimes hundreds of dollars per click — to attract the attention of people who are in a mood to buy. Searchers are far more valuable than browsers – and Yahoo’s properties may be compelling to browse within, but not for intent-based behavior.One must keep this fundamental fact in mind when contemplating the relative health of Google, Yahoo, and other players, and not be distracted by the advantage that one may have over another in terms of absolute unique users, because revenue per unique user is a far more telling indicator of business viability.
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