the PPC Book|Pay Per Click Blog | Long Tail Thoughts in a Short Tail World

‘Imagine there’s no Adwords, it’s easy if you try’ - John Lennon

The macroeconomic slump has finally broken through and touched the impenetrable wall of The Google. While I’m not a financial analyst, I know that share price often has little to do with anything other than the psychology of outsiders. Nor am I worried that the world of search marketing is just around the corner from impending doom.

HOWEVER - there are a few tidbits that give me pause. If only because of the wee little fact that almost every single dollar in my bank account is generated from the existence of, and my salable skills using, Adwords and other search marketing vehicles.

Here are those tidbits:

the number of clicks on ads next to Google’s search results fell by 7% between December and January. Google’s ad click performance was also down 0.3% on January last year, according to comScore.

Does this represent a slowdown? Or are we just seeing a reflection of ’shopping’ in general. Who buys anything in January?

So much for that thought…

Google had seen the same 7% decline between November and December. ComScore’s data also showed that Yahoo saw a 1% month-on-month fall in paid search ad clicks in January, but Microsoft saw a 4% rise.

OK, this is worrisome, 7% drop 2 months in a row? During the holiday season? What’s going on? Did the clickable area decision come back to bite them?

The speculation will continue, and smarter folks than I will debate the topic.

Let’s not get crazy though. Some facts to calm us all down:

$16.6bn revenues from search advertising

$8bn in cash and the liquidity of its shares

Analysts at Citigroup also said that Google’s efforts to improve the quality of leads for its advertisers, by trying to reduce accidental clicks, may have impacted the volume of search clicks as well as the wider macro-economic climate.

Moving towards quality is always a good thing. Google is fine, thank goodness, but as we’re seeing, nothing is immune to a really bad economic slowdown.

Darn.

So my original question - what would you do if this niche went away? Personally, being in this business since the mid 90’s, I’ve moved from web development, to email/permission marketing, to coreg, to search. I suppose I would just adjust and move to another area of online. Mobile marketing maybe? Or maybe I’d sell trailers. Something different.

What about you?