Google announced their fourth quarter earnings for the 2011 year and it really didn't make wall street all that happy. Their stock sunk almost 10% in after hours trading, now hovering at a little over 7% under closing yesterday.
But Wall Street is not the only group of people upset.
As I reported at Search Engine Land last night, the paid clicks and CPC results were also announced.
Paid clicks grew 34% year over year but the cost per click dropped 8% year over year. Now this may look good, advertisers are getting more clicks for less, right? But not all advertisers see it that way, some suspect Google is sending less traffic to advertisers and more traffic to themselves (Google).
A WebmasterWorld thread has one advertiser saying:
That provides one answer, yes indeed Google is funneling more clicks towards their own interests, be it to their products or simply moving a search engine user onto a paid result instead of a natural result.The value of Google is sinking, wall st is catching up to what webmasters have been saying all year imo. I don't think Mr Schmidt knows how not to continue breaking a good thing, he keeps doing what not many ever asked for or wanted from Google.
Or you can look at it the other way, that there are more customers using Google, finding your products and it is costing you less per user. Or not?
- Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, increased approximately 34% over the fourth quarter of 2010 and increased approximately 17% over the third quarter of 2011.
- Cost-Per-Click – Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, decreased approximately 8% over the fourth quarter of 2010 and decreased approximately 8% over the third quarter of 2011.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
