Data Points on Googles Growth - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

A useful reality check -- see the full post for some contradictory data points

These kinds of reports and anecdotes can help us understand only part of what’s going on. Paid clicks, for instance, don’t take into account the price that advertisers pay for those clicks, which can ebb and flow based on a large number of variables. And search marketers tend to over-represent larger advertisers and under-represent the many smaller businesses that use search as a marketing tool, so their reports are far from definitive.

Investors who are making bets today based on those data points will have to wait until Google reports first-quarter earnings to find out how those bets turn out.

Data Points on Googles Growth - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog