"Also making modest gains in market share, Microsoft now captures 4% of search
budgets in the UK," writes the author. "Both Google's and Microsoft Live Search gains come at the expense of Yahoo."
Efficient Frontier also found that average Google CPC rates increased by nearly 16% year-over-year. Live Search CPC rates also rose by about 6% on average, while they fell by 0.5% on Yahoo. Yahoo however, took steps to improve the quality of its search syndication partners that resulted in a nearly 8% increase in advertiser ROI.