A 41 percent hike in online sales between April and September helped Yell record only a relatively modest profit fall of 2.7 percent to £118.3 million - relatively modest, given the circumstances of what could be deadly times for the business directory business, that is.

UK web revenue from Yell.com rose 23.3 percent to £80.3 million as the number of online advertisers crept up 2.4 percent to 213,000. Monthly unique users grew 47.8 percent to 9.9 million. But half of Yell’s business is still the printed Yellow Pages, which saw its customer base slim by 8.9 percent to 204,000 - overall, Yell UK lost 16,000 customers and sales were 3.4 percent lower than the same period last year.

As we all know by now, the local classified advertising market is at great risk, and the company expects sales to dip another five percent by year’s end. So cuts are on the way. CEO John Condron: “Global economic trends show no sign of improving; therefore, we are actively working on further cost reduction programmes that will primarily benefit next year.”

FT.com: “Yell will save £150 million in the current year and £100m in 2009, with about 1,300 jobs lost in each period.” No real acquisition talk today for Yell, which was previously linked with Google (NSDQ: GOOG) et al.

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