Google Q1 2006 beats revenue estimates.
My estimate for their sequential revenue increase was 15%, they came in at 17%. That extra 2% is an additional $50M (they did $2.25B instead of the predicted $2.2B), so where did this $50M come from ?
If you dig deeper in their results, the Google O&O revenue (owned and operated, i.e. their own sites), you will see that it was up 18%, as opposed to 16% for the Google Network revenues (these are mainly revenues from search partners like AOL, Earthlink, Ask, but it also includes a small fraction from Adsense content ads).
So, one of two things happened, either (1) Google gained more marketshare than Comscore estimates (Comscore estimated 15%, hence my estimate), or their cost-per-click was higher in Q1 than in Q4. The $50M possibly came from both of the above, since (1) Eric Schmidt that they are seeing marketshare increase, and (2) I heard from many sources that Google has been increasing the minimum bid for many of its keywords, which forces advertisers to pay higher (though this might also lead to lower coverage and CTR if the advertiser does not increase their bid and drops out).
As for my prediction of the Google stock falling, I was obviously off there 🙂 (more like 🙁 ), the after hours are currently showing a $33 increase, and I think that is due to profits rather than revenues. Google’s costs did not go up as high as expected in Q1, that allowed them to get a $2.29 EPS which is significantly above the $1.98 predicted by analysts.
— amr