Google Keeps it Simple to Bring Big Q4 Revenue

by Jordan Yerman | January 23, 2009 at 12:19 pm

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Google's Q4 revenue has jumped 18% over last year's, while other tech companies are struggling. How can this be?

Mainly because the search giant keeps it simple, doing one particular thing particularly well; also, that thing happens to be search, which every web user uses pretty much every day. With adwords, you don't even have to use Google to see its presence throughout the web.

Wait a minute. Wasn't there supposed to be a recession happening or something? How did Google do well, if not actually knock the ball out of the park?

In short, Google had two things going for it. First, people performed more Google searches. Second, when they did, Google showed the search ads more often.

Interestingly, the economic downturn itself caused web traffic to behave according to Google's business model: more searches mean more targeted ads mean more revenue.

As the same Google executives predicted in a similar call a quarter ago, Google's ad sales benefited during the holiday season from aggressive price promotions by retailers. In terms of the products and services searched for, automotive searches turned out to be surprisingly popular, showing that at least some folks were looking to buy cars from October through December.

On the real estate side, searches for foreclosures -- as opposed to mortgages, for example -- grew unusually prevalent, analysts were told tonight.