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ComScore: Actually, We Were Right About Google

After comScore issued a series of reports showing that Google's paid click growth in the U.S. was nearly flat in the first quarter, investors blamed the Web measurement firm for costing them millions when the search giant actually delivered stronger than expected earnings. In an email to clients, comScore CEO Magid Abraham responds to the criticism, saying that not only was the data accurate, but it reveals that Google's U.S. business is weakening.

Abraham claims that many pundits failed to draw a distinction between Google's domestic and international operations in concluding that his company had missed the mark: while international paid click growth was strong, U.S. paid click growth was nearly flat, and so was domestic revenue growth. In fact, Abraham claims that comScore's U.S. paid click data for Google mirrors the company's U.S. revenue trend over the past year.

While comScore's data doesn't include AdSense, the impact of changes in Google's price-per-click, or paid clicks from partner sites like AOL, Abraham says "the strong relationship of the two trends is undeniable." Moreover, he adds that there's a lesson to be learned here: "To extrapolate a single data point across all aspects of a company's business can lead to wildly inaccurate conclusions." Indeed.

Read the whole story at Silicon Alley Insider »

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