Tonight’s CBS Evening News had an interesting piece on Google’s trouble as the ad market slows ahead of a possible recession. The company had 533 million ad clicks in January 2007 — and 532 clicks in January 2008 — a surprising (albeit slight) decrease over the past year. Google’s stock is also hurting – under the $500 mark, when it was over $700 late last year.
Update from Cory: While Google’s stock is hurting a bit, the Comscore search report that showed a reduction in clicks is “a result of Google’s own quality initiatives that result in a reduction in the number of paid listings and, therefore, the opportunity for paid clicks to occur,” explains Comscore in an update on its blog. In other words, the report that triggered all of this may not be an effect of the market. Most analysts agree that it’s too early to make a judgment on whether Google is feeling the impact of a slowing ad market — in fact, some say Google will remain on a torrid growth pace.
Does CBS News report any of this? Nope.