Yahoo’s homepage: A stark illustration of a company that can’t get its act together

Hear "Facebook," and most people will immediately think of social networking. Say "Google" and they'll think of search -- it's got its own verb, for goodness sake. If someone tells you they'll "Yahoo" that? Nothing comes to mind, does it?

That's a bad thing for the company, having announced Wednesday morning that it's considering spinning off its "core business" to make it more valuable in the eyes of investors -- and perhaps suitors as well. For consumers, that doesn't mean much right now. But such a move that would put even more pressure on the company and its products to stand out on their own.

Chief executive Marissa Mayer said Wednesday in a call with analysts that she thinks Yahoo's core business is on "a better path" than when she took over. In light of Wednesday's news, I decided to evaluate that statement by taking a reviewer's eye to the company's most visible product: Yahoo.com.

You could argue that, in terms of mindshare, Yahoo.com is dead and totally irrelevant. But the truth is that Yahoo is still one of the Web’s top properties, ranking third behind only Google and Facebook.

Not that that third-place finish has been that helpful for Yahoo. Looking at the main website, it's not hard to see why. It's fairly confusing, even outdated:

Mayer knew that when she took the company's top job in 2012 — she inherited a tangle of half-baked strategies from her predecessors and was charged with converting those half-steps into a turnaround.

There's no doubt that was a big challenge. But just looking at Yahoo's main website shows you that Mayer hasn't managed to pick a strategy either. Top billing goes to Yahoo's own daily news operation, but the bulk of the page is devoted to stories from other places. And there's also no sense of prioritization. The premium content Mayer ponied up big money for — Katie Couric's reports, David Pogue's reviews and stories from its admirable sports staff — are shuffled to the side, in a spot that would normally house an ad you were trying to ignore. That makes them seem less important than the stories Yahoo is picking up from other sites.