Interesting Data Point on Google

By Shawn Anderson

We were wondering why our Google ads for TMT Advisors were not showing up in several Google searches so we logged into our AdWords account to get a handle on the issue. The account was set up in the fourth quarter of 2008 when all was doom and gloom for anything finance related. Max first page CPC bids for each keyword were set at $0.25 and all keywords were finance/valuation related. Our ads were either second or third on the search results pages.

What we saw when we logged in was a note/explanation on how to resolve our problem. We now needed to set max first page CPC bids to $0.40 if we wanted our ads to show up on the first page, a full 60% year-over-year increase. The keyword “internet stocks” has a max CPC bid set to $2.00. Consensus is estimating 15% revenue growth for Google for 4Q09. Not saying a direct correlation exists but I believe a 60% increase in the max CPC bid is quite telling.