Gasta Tech Update: Google banned more than an estimated 30,000 advertisers

Gasta SearchMatch traffic increases
Ban of 5% of AdWords Advertisers Pointed to Strong Q4 for Google

On Dec. 3, Google banned more than an estimated 30,000 advertisers who utilized its AdWords system, according to Chicago-based AdGooroo. This was the equivalent of banning approximately 5.3 percent of active advertisers who use the system, yet AdGooroo saw this as a sign that the search giant would have a strong fourth quarter – and they were right.

Last Thursday, Google announced that it had made $1.97 billion, or $6.13 per share, during the final quarter of 2009. This reflected a huge increase from its $382 million in earnings during the same quarter in 2008.

Revenue in the fourth quarter was $6.7 billion, an increase of 17 percent from the previous year. According to BusinessWeek, analysts expect Google’s revenue to boom about 20 percent in 2010, up about 9 percent from 2009.

AdGooroo, which noted that Google has always had strong fourth-quarter showings, saw the huge ban of advertisers as a good sign: “It is unlikely that Google’s management team would permit such a wide scale ban to take place during a weak quarter, so this almost certainly signifies strong quarter over quarter growth,” the company noted in a press release.

About two days before Google announced its fourth-quarter results, AdGooroo looked at its ad coverage metric and found that worldwide ad coverage drooped by nearly 10 percent in December to 4.97 ads per keyword from 5.48 in November. This came after 12 months of steady increases, according to the company, which believed that “this small drop will be more than offset by strong ad revenues.”

AdGooroo also noted that the top 80 U.S. retailers Google spend increased 12.5 percent to $298 million in the fourth quarter from $264 million in the third quarter.

“While most retail categories were up, several sectors stood out as particularly strong, including traditional retailers (“bricks”), online retailers (“clicks”), clothing, shoes, furniture, and auctions,” the company’s press release noted. “Weaker categories included consumer electronics (down 4.2% in Q4), office products (down 13%), children’s goods (down 2%), and home décor (down 15%).”

Google saw a 5.30 percent drop in first-page advertisers in December, compared to a 1.96 percent gain in the same month in 2008. Yahoo! experienced a 4.87 percent drop, compared to a 1.35 percent gain in November. Meanwhile, Bing experienced a 4.16 percent drop in December.

Google led the way with 81.0 percent of worldwide advertisers, followed by Yahoo! with 26.7 percent and Bing with 11.6 percent in December, according to AdGooroo.

In December, the top 25 advertisers for Google included amazon.com, ask.com, business.com, eBay.com and zappos.com. Best-price.com, mapquest.com and maps.google.com all made new appearances in the top-25 list for Google.

“Mesothelioma” was the most expensive keyword in December on Google, with a maximum cost-per-click of $99.44, followed by “buy structured settlements” with $79.01, “asbestos law suits” with $78.10 and “conference calling companies” with $75.29.

On Yahoo!, the most expensive keyword in December was “lloyds tsb insurance” ($53.44), followed by “scotttrade” ($45.27), “loyds insurance” ($44.58) and “love film” ($40.20).

“Low apr student credit card” ($54.24) was the keyword with the highest maximum CPC on Bing in December, followed by “accounting degrees” ($54.04), “student credit card application” ($51.39) and “health and dental insurance” ($50.15).


by Jason Hahn