Following the release of April US search engine rankings by comScore, Don Dodge, Microsoft’s Director of Business Development for Emerging Business, has written a very interesting post on his blog about why 1% of search market share is worth over $1 Billion.
While Don’s post focuses on making the point that Microsoft, AOL and Ask should not give up because even just 1% of market share is worth a lot of money for the search engines, some rather interesting points are made when reaching this conclusion:
- Google earns an average of $0.12 (£0.06) per search performed in the US alone!
- Every Internet user is worth $1 to Google
- Internationally (outside the US) Google earns approximately $0.048 per search
- Worldwide search values are about $0.053 (£0.03) per search.
These numbers put Google’s user-centricity in perspective. Google recognised long ago that so long as they keep searchers happy, they will keep returning to Google. And so long as Google has the numbers, advertisers will flock to it, bringing it more and more revenue.
Its recent actions, such as buying YouTube and launching iGoogle are also clear moves to control more Internet traffic and grow its earnings beyond just search numbers, where it already has a dominant market share.
