Google released third-quarter earnings last night and it was a very good earnings release. Overall, Google's earnings are up 7% this past quarter compared to last years Q3. They earned $5.94 billion in revenue with operating income at $2.07 billion, or 35% of revenues. Greg Sterling has more of the business news at Search Engine Land.
Pulling out two snippets from the release, we see that search marketings are more spend conscious because the cost per click went down by 6%. But to make up for it, Google saw an increase in the actual number of clicks on their ads by 14%. Here is that part of the earnings release:
Paid Clicks - Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 14% over the third quarter of 2008 and increased approximately 4% over the second quarter of 2009.Cost-Per-Click - Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, decreased approximately 6% over the third quarter of 2008 and increased approximately 5% over the second quarter of 2009.
GOOG, the stock, is currently up over 3% in pre-market (after hours) trading.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.