Tongues in UK are wagging again with last year’s rumor Google (NSDQ: GOOG) might bid for business listings UK publisher Yell. It never happened in ‘07, but that didn’t stop new unattributed talk of a £5-per-share offer (see the Indie) bumping the Berkshire-based group’s market price up at last night’s close.

CMC Markets trader Jimmy Yates tells Bloomberg: “I’m not surprised to hear (the rumour) has surfaced again. Yell has lost almost half its value in the last 11 months and certainly looks more attractive now as a takeover candidate.” A £5 share offer would be considerably less than the £6.50-per-share value mooted in May. But then, that was speculation, too.

Yell.com got 6.6 million unique users and 28.4 million searches in September (ABCe figs) but that’s fallen (33 million searches in March) and the group perhaps has as much value in its data relationships. Yell has provided listings to Google services like maps, mobile and local results since 2005, so Google would need to see some value in bringing Yell in-house. Incidentally, the partnership doesn’t work the other way around - Yell’s maps are powered by Multimap, not Google Maps.