Yell shares are still scraping the barrel this morning after the Yell.com and Yellow Pages classifieds aggregator struck a cautious note on the prospects for UK advertising. All CEO John Condon had to tell the FT, following Yell’s latest earnings, was: “It looks as though UK plc came back from Christmas more cautious and conservative than we’ve seen before.” Cue a slump from Wednesday’s 330p close to 279.75 last night.

They say the first thing to go in a recession is advertising spend. But Yell’s problem is not so much the might of Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) or Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) over its online efforts as the momentum moving away from print more quickly. A 4.4 percent dip in Yell’s print classified advertising during the nine months to December 31 was offset by 49 percent growth for Yell.com so overall revenue grew 3.3 percent to £527 million.