Google continues to grow despite the recession

Interesting post from Ryan Scott with eight reasons why Google continues to do well, with their revenue up in the last quarter of 2008:-

Internet usage has grown globally by 16% year on year (Internet World Stats) – more users means increased usage of Google and greater opportunity for revenue.

Google lifts their longstanding embargo for bidding on gambling and alcohol based terms – bidding wars for this lucrative traffic could reportedly net Google an extra £300 million a year!

Emergence of universal search makes natural listings harder to achieve – Paid search provides reliable shortcut to traffic for advertisers.

Google Suggest – Google, by pre-empting searches with ‘most popular’ cues, has said to be slowly killing off the longtail. This potentially means more people coming through on fewer search queries. In turn this bottle necks traffic by almost forcing people into higher demand keywords. A knock on effect of this being an increase in revenues on ‘costlier’ keywords.

Growing reputation of SEM as a ROI focused sales tool – 80% of advertisers cite their search spend will increase in the next two years (European Interactive Advertising Association 2008)

Declining markets drives up advertiser demand for traffic- more competitive and aggressive bidding means higher CPCs.

Advertising Opportunities – Google’s innovative means of planning and delivering adverts to end users continues to grow (almost daily) The invent of Google 3PAS, Ad Planner and the pure global reach makes it an attractive medium when budgets are squeezed.

The festive season! – People spend more during Q4 with online shoppers spending £4.67bn online last month, up 14%% on 2007.