Google hit by web advertising slowdown

by Staff Brand Republic 28-Mar-08, 15:55

SAN FRANCISCO - The growth in the number of US web users clicking on Google ads has begun to show signs of slowing down, unofficial figures from web measurement body ComScore have revealed.

According to data released this week, Google's paid clickthroughs fell 3% in February compared with the previous month.

The figure was up just 3% on the February 2007 figure -- a far cry from the 25% growth in clickthroughs that the firm witnessed in the last quarter of 2007.

It is the second consecutive month that the rate has fallen. Clickthroughs in January were down 7.5% on the previous month, according to ComScore.

Last month, Google argued that the fall was down to its work on making the text ads -- which are based on the context of the page on which they appear -- more useful to users.

The search giant refused to comment on the latest batch of ComScore data.

The company's share price took a hit yesterday on the back of the news and by the end of the day was down 3% on Wednesday's closing price, down from $458 to $444.

Google is expected to announce its results for the first three months of the year on April 17.

Meanwhile, ComScore web traffic rankings for the UK have shown Google remained more than 2m users ahead of MSN in February.

Google was again the most visited website last month, with 29.3m unique users. The top four ranking remains unchanged, with Microsoft's network of sites coming second with 27.6m, followed by eBay on 21m and Yahoo! on 20.6m.