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Google to ComScore: You owe us $15-billion

Started by mathewi · 7 months ago

Earlier this week, comScore released a report looking at Google’s click-through rates for January, which showed a precipitous decline — and that in turn caused a similar precipitous decline in the company’s share price, slicing about $15-billion or so wort ... Continue reading »

11 comments

  • interesting times indeed as web 2.0 moves stocks around
  • comScore lost a lot of credibility by trying to create news without providing all of the facts or analysis at the same time.
  • yawn.

    you're only getting to this story now?. zdnet, techcrunch, cnet, and a cast of thousands had it yesterday.
  • I'm not trying to be first, David.


    On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 8:52 AM, Disqus
  • What the hell? Since when was blogging some competition to break every story first? Grow up, bugger off or do both.
  • Interesting analysis, Matthew. Always better to be best than first.

    You raised a key point no one else has addressed: comScore sells the proprietary research and didn't release it publicly. So only a few i-bankers reviewed the data.

    That led to an uninformed media frenzy that relied on a couple analyst notes.

    The outcome was predictable: doomsday scenarios for Google paid search advertising, wild speculation, anonymous "insider data" and finally, an intelligent discussion of what comScore data truly indicates.

    Great headline, by the way.

    Kevin Heisler
    Executive Editor
    Search Engine Watch
  • Thanks, Kevin. Henry Blodget made that point too, I think, when he
    pointed out that comScore hadn't talked to anyone at Google before
    they put together the report.


    On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Disqus
  • I really respect what Google is doing with their position on the online advertising space. They aren't afraid to take 3 steps forward and then take 1 step back for the goal of making the 'internet a better place'.

    Last year, they pulled the plug on arbitrage and it killed a few companies like Geosigns that ran linkfarms and splogs. I'm sure it had adverse effects on Google also, but they did it anyways.

    The more transparent they are about such moves, I believe would make stories like this one non-existant.
  • I like the straw breaking the camel back idea because the market should know better than to 1) trust a single report from Comscore that 2) the market watchers appear to have misinterpreted anyway. I'm still confused though - it almost feels like Comscore is covering their *ss in case of a lawsuit. The re-interpretation of the results is not very clear, in fact my read is that they are suggesting the data suggests that Google's Q1 will actually be better due to higher per click yields.
  • AdGooroo just released their quarterly research report on Google and Yahoo. It clearly shows that Google's quality algorithm cost them quite a few advertisers since July, but that they bounced back in Q1 (at Yahoo's expense). This seems to support the idea that earnings will be up.

    http://www.adgooroo.com/google_gains_advertiser...
  • Exactly! The future of social media is in promoting content with the highest value. The current mass media model promotes content with too much emphasis on speed and not enough emphasis on authority.

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