• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, June 2, 2005

Google stock is likely to continue to climb, according to a report by Credit Suisse First Boston released Wednesday. The CSFB report, which was issued the day after an optimistic Piper Jaffray research note, set a new 12-month target price of $350 for the Mountain View, Calif.-based company from a prior target of $275. Piper Jaffray had raised its target price to $300 from $275.

The CSFB report estimated growth at 5 percent sequentially, based on query volume from Nielsen//NetRatings and pricing surveys. "[W]hile we are cautious about the potential for an eBay-like event down the road as investor expectations rise with the share price, it does not appear to be a near-term risk," stated the report.

Specifically, Nielsen//NetRatings data cited in CSFB's report showed that Google received around 1.99 billion search queries in April, from a total of around 71.93 million searchers. The queries and searchers were both down 3 percent from March, but queries were up 3 percent from the same time period last quarter, while the number of searchers was up 1 percent from the same time frame last quarter.

Google's next closest competitor in search, Yahoo!, had around 919.89 search queries in April--less than half of Google's--according to the report. Yahoo! also drew about 48.86 million search users. From March to April, searches increased by 1 percent on Yahoo, while the number of searchers dropped by 2 percent.

MSN drew 515.92 million searches in April--down 13 percent from March; around 40.56 million searchers used MSN's search engine in April, a decrease of 4 percent from March.