15-04-2009 Facebook Refers 19% of Google’s Uniques
RBC Capital Markets points out that 19% of Google’s unique visitors are referred by Facebook, up from just 9% a year ago. Given current rates of growth, they also suggest that Facebook will overtake Google in terms of number of unique visitors by 2011-2012.
These two fairly amazing data points permit a couple of interesting conclusions:
* A much higher proportion of referrals from Facebook go to Google rather than to Yahoo or Microsoft (who actually have a paid agreement with Facebook) which means that Facebook’s growth is pushing Google’s share of search higher than it would be otherwise.
* If Facebook are seeking monetization, then a referral deal with Google seems like a good place to begin.
RBC concludes:
Facebook is actually positive and complementary for Google thus far, but that could change if Facebook’s rapid growth trajectory continues on its current path, or if/when social media can find a business model and attract ad dollars from other online media.
At the very least, we think Facebook as the “starting point” for more and more users on the Internet could create some multiple compression for Google over time, if the momentum continues.
Using my secret-agent financial analyst decoder ring, I can tell you that “multiple compression for Google” in this context should be taken to read, “Google is paying MySpace $1 billion per year for perhaps 3% of Google’s traffic. On that basis Facebook should be hitting Google up for $6 billion a year, no?”
Report: Yahoo Increasing First-Page Advertisers
The keyword-tool provider AdGooroo this week released their Q1 2009 Search Engine Advertising Update which is based on an analysis of the number of ads served per keyword on each of the major search engines.
There are a number of interesting findings in the report, notably:
* that there was a significant increase in the number of ads per keyword but a drop in the number of first-page advertisers – this may point to the search engines artificially increasing the number of ads in some way to make up for decreases in advertising activity;
* Yahoo increased their active advertisers by 10% and advertiser share by 4%, seemingly at the expense of Microsoft;
* Bank of America and resellers of used cars are advertising big right now.
Amazon Pulls Back From Affiliate PPC
Following last week’s news of Amazon suddenly shutting down referral fees to affiliates resulting from PPC traffic, discussion seems to have moved to a recognition that much of the traffic about which Amazon was concerned was not resulting from PPC arbitrage on keywords but instead may have been a product of trademark squatting.
If that’s the case, it means that Amazon took the view that this was traffic they should have been getting anyway and that the PPC affiliates weren’t adding any value. By killing PPC affiliate activity, Amazon can now use the search engines to help police its trademarks and won’t have to pay the affiliate commissions.
