For years, Google's incredible financial results have been driven by the simple fact that millions of consumers are increasingly moving to the web to "search, find, try, and buy" stuff — and 70% of the time they use Google.
It is total domination in terms of market share — and Google's direct
connection to the consumer, at precisely the right time, has afforded
them a huge contextual advantage over traditional media.
But the current economic environment is incredibly difficult — and even they are not immune.
According to the WSJ article:
IAC, whose Ask.com
search engine's ad sales are handled by Google, noted on a conference
call last week that the search trends "have not been good over the last
30 to 60 days…particularly on commercial-oriented queries." Making matters worse is the fact that people are taking longer to make a decision — thereby browsing more products from different sites and reducing the returns on individual
clicks — which in turn reduces the price that marketers are willing to
pay for keywords.
search engine's ad sales are handled by Google, noted on a conference
call last week that the search trends "have not been good over the last
30 to 60 days…particularly on commercial-oriented queries." Making matters worse is the fact that people are taking longer to make a decision — thereby browsing more products from different sites and reducing the returns on individual
clicks — which in turn reduces the price that marketers are willing to
pay for keywords.
The result is likely to be a sharp slowing in Google's growth rate — and slowing from 19% to 11% is a great problem if you're Google.
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