The general, head of US Middle East and Central Asian operations, said America would back Yemen's fight with al-Qaeda.
It came as UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown discussed how Britain and the US were tackling Islamists in the region.
An al-Qaeda offshoot in the Arab nation has been linked to a failed attack on a plane over the US on Christmas Day
Confirming Gen Petraeus' visit to Yemen on Saturday, a senior Obama administration official told AFP news agency: "We have made Yemen a priority over the course of [the past] year, and this is the latest in that effort."
'Tighten the noose'
Analysts say the US has been providing intelligence and other help to Yemeni forces, which carried out raids on 17 and 24 December that reportedly killed more than 60 militants.
YEMEN FACTS
Population: 23.6 million (UN, 2009)
Capital: Sanaa
Major language: Arabic
Major religion: Islam
Oil exports: $1.5bn/24.5m barrels (Jan-Oct 2009)
Income per capita: US $950 (World Bank, 2008)
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Yemeni officials said on Saturday they had sent more troops to fight al-Qaeda militants in the provinces of Abyan, Baida and Shabwa.
"These measures are part of operations to hunt down elements of al-Qaeda... and tighten the noose around extremists," a Yemeni official told AFP news agency.
Earlier, the British prime minister's office said the UK and US would jointly fund a new counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen.
Officials in Washington said funding was already in place and they were unaware of any new initiatives.
Security challenge
On Saturday, President Barack Obama accused Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula of orchestrating a failed Christmas Day attack on a US plane.
The group said in an internet statement last week it had trained Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who spent time in Yemen last year, to carry out the attempted bombing of the airliner over Detroit.
In his weekly address, Mr Obama said he had made it "a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government, training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al-Qaeda terrorists".
He said training camps had already "been struck, leaders eliminated, plots disrupted".
Correspondents say the Yemeni government needs economic as well as military aid.
With a fast-growing and impoverished population, the country is facing diminishing water reserves and the likelihood that its only source of income, oil, will run dry in a few years.
But security is just as big a challenge, complicated by an abundance of firearms, an insurgency in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.
While the government is weak and unpopular in much of the country, the US has little choice but to work through it to fight al-Qaeda as any overt US presence would almost certainly provoke a public backlash.
But the prospects of re-asserting central government authority over the lawless areas where al-Qaeda is based look, in the opinion of some analysts, remote - even with beefed-up American support.
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