Yahoo's Private Traffic Data and Email Reveal Rough Road for Marissa Mayer

After six months on the job, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer hasn't made Yahoo any more popular, according to private ComScore data obtained by Kara Swisher at AllThingsD. And that's not the only problem facing the ailing company.

After six months on the job, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer hasn't made Yahoo any more popular, according to private ComScore data obtained by Kara Swisher at AllThingsD. Visits to Yahoo Mail, the Yahoo homepage, and Yahoo search have all dropped in the last year, continuing a years long trend. In November and December of 2012, traffic to Yahoo's mail service was down 16 and 12 percent, respectively, with search traffic declining 28 and 24 percent. Homepage numbers were down 17 percent in November, from 110 million to 91.8 million, before stabilizing in December. Swisher says "this matters a great deal," noting that the three hubs have also led to declines in other areas, and it's something advertisers will care about.

Yes, the disappointing leaked information means that Mayer hasn't exactly brought new life into the ailing company — at least not gains that can be accounted for in terms of pure data. Then again, it's only been six months. And, to be fair, Mayer hasn't touched the homepage or search, while Yahoo's new mail app just launched last month.

Interestingly, the one bright spot for Yahoo in those stats was Flickr. Unique monthly visitors to the once-beloved photo sharing site ticked up to 26.7 million from 19.4 million in the month of December. That happens to be the same month the company relaunched its app, just in time for Instagram to scare users over to Yahoo's photo product. AppData numbers showed a bump in members following the Facebook-Instagram scandal over the app's terms of service:

Of course, this data does not reflect the loyalty of those users... they could leave.

Swisher doesn't think much of the Flickr bump, calling it bright spot in Yahoo-land and "not a money-maker for Yahoo, even if its return does burnish the company's tech and innovation cred." However, any positive results still matter, especially with Mayer doubling down on mobile.

Swisher sought out the numbers in the first place because her well-placed sources inside the company urged her. Happy workers wouldn't want to smear their boss like that, would they? Indeed, compounding the disappointing traffic data is word of a new rift that Mayer has been facing internal frustrations. "While she is an great product person, she isn't capable of running this company," reads one bullet point from an email surfaced by way of Business Insider, typo and all. Passing around the email to sources, BI's Nicholas Carlson learned that not everyone agrees with this take, but that the anti-Mayer people make up a minority — at least for now.