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Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen declared yesterday that the company is “not opposed” to a deal that could potentially sell their search business, in a move that made Yahoo shares go up by 3 percent today on the stock market.

“To be very clear, we’re not opposed to doing a deal that would maximize the value of the business in one way or another, be it a partnership or be it a long term sale,” Jorgensen said during a Goldman Sachs conference on Wednesday.

But he also said that the Yahoo search business is deeply linked to the company’s other online products and properties, which means that any deal, whether a partnership or a sale, could only be made for the right reasons and the right economics. “It’s extremely difficult to draw a line down the middle of the organization and split it into two pieces,” Jorgensen said at the conference.

He didn’t mention Microsoft specifically, which has repeatedly said it was interested in doing a search deal with Yahoo to compete against market leader Google Inc; however, the Redmond-based software giant still remains the most likely candidate for just such a deal.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has said she did not join the company in January to sell it, nor did she have an initial intention of doing a search deal, but that instead “everything is on the table”. The Internet company is widely expected to announce a major corporate reorganization during the course of the next few days.

According to Jorgensen, Bartz is bringing a more disciplined approach to how Yahoo operates. “She’s very decisive [and] can operate with a gut instinct. She’s very interested in simplifying the company and focusing Yahoo on some of its core strengths [...] She also doesn’t put up with careless behavior [...] She is intolerant of anyone that is late to a meeting, and that is very different than the Yahoo way. That will change the behavior of the company over time,” Jorgensen told the press.

Last month, the company predicted that sales in the current quarter would decline between 5 percent and 16 percent over the course of the next year to between $1.525 billion and $1.725 billion. Jorgensen explained this by saying that advertisers are “in shock” because of the current economy, but cited the better returns on investment that advertisers get with Yahoo compared with traditional marketing mediums.

While Yahoo has not experienced any delays collecting payments from customers, Jorgensen said the company is paying close attention to that sector. He also said the company would eventually reinvent its share repurchasing program, which has been on hold since last year, though he gave no specific timeline for when buybacks might resume.

Yahoo has long said that it would like to use the targeting capabilities of its search business to better place graphical and display advertising in front of its audience. On Tuesday, the company announced a number of related products, including “search retargeting” technology that lets advertisers examine a user’s previous searches to target their display ads.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer told investors this week that the company is still interested in talks with Yahoo, saying the partnership would help both companies compete against Google. Ballmer signaled that he would be willing to reach an agreement with Carol Bartz to make this agreement a reality.

Market analyst Sandeep Aggarwal told his clients in a note that Jorgensen’s comments “essentially not only expressed Yahoo’s interest in a search deal but also publicly set the stage for some possible negotiations with Microsoft”. As a result, today Yahoo shares climbed up by 39 cents, or 3 percent, to $12.87 in afterhours trading.