Yahoo overtakes Google and Microsoft in US traffic

Yahoo has outperformed rivals Google and Microsoft in terms of internet traffic across all its sites for the first time in several years.

According to internet analytics firm ComScore, Yahoo attracted 196,564,000 unique US visitors to its sites in the month of July, compared to 192,251,000 for second place Google and 179,494,000 for Microsoft.

This represents an increase of 7,837,000 unique visitors for Yahoo, while Google's figures actually shrank by 339,000 the third month in a row it has experienced a decline.

Yahoo also managed to top ComScore's Ad Focus ranking, which measures top ad-focused sites and networks in order of audience size.

Yahoo has been steadily increasing the number of visitors to its sites since Marissa Mayer took over as CEO in July 2012.

She has credited the slow and steady recovery of the 19-year-old company to changes she has made since her appointment, which has included the acquisition of blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion (704.47 million) in May 2013.

Yahoo also recently announced its acquisition of social web browser firm RockMelt.

Mayer said she hopes to end a 10-year search revenue deal that was signed with Microsoft in 2010 to use the latter firm's Bing search engine, after she publicly claimed Yahoo was not benefiting financially from the agreement.

However, despite the upbeat news from ComScore, Yahoo reported a drop in revenues in July due to a reduction in display advertising and search revenue of 13 per cent and 9 per cent respectively. This led to a 1.7 per cent share price drop.