Google Inc. reported sharply lower fourth-quarter profits Thursday from bad investments, while its core business showed resilience amid the global recession.
The results, which beat analysts' expectations, were enough to dispel investor concerns about how the company is weathering the gloomy economy. But at the same time, the earnings highlighted the fact that the Mountain View Internet leader isn't immune from the downturn.
Google said fourth-quarter profit fell 68 percent to $382 million ($1.21 per share), from $1.2 billion ($3.79) a year ago. Much of the decline was attributed to a $1.09 billion charge for soured investments in wireless provider Clearwire and in the AOL Web portal, owned by Time Warner.
Excluding various expenses like the write-downs, Google would have earned $5.10 per share. Analysts had expected a $4.95 per share profit on that basis.
Google's fourth-quarter revenue increased 18 percent to $5.7 billion, up from $4.83 billion for the equivalent period in 2007.
"Anybody who is concerned about buying Google stock is probably breathing a sigh of relief," said Jason Helfstein, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. "Google is still growing, and you can't say that about a lot of media companies."
Google's shares rose $5.40, or 1.8 percent, in after-hours trading to $311.90. Over the past year, Google's shares have tumbled 47 percent as investors worried about a slowdown in advertising and the company's increasing maturity.
In reaction to the falling stock, Google said Thursday it would allow employees to exchange their options for ones that have a lower exercise price based on where the stock is trading March 2. Executives described the program as a way to retain and motivate employees, 85 percent of whom hold options that are worthless at their current exercise price.
Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst with Collins Stewart, called the option exchange, which is expected to cost $460 million, expensive and complained that it will harm existing shareholders.
Google executives have argued that the company is more resistant to recession than many other media companies. Marketers are less likely to cut their spending on search ads - Google's main business - because it is more targeted and its success is more easily measured than other forms of advertising, they said.
The fourth-quarter results bolster Google's argument, at least in relation to the final three months of 2008. Revenue grew in most advertising categories, the company said, helped by an 18 percent increase in ads clicked on by users.
Still, Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, described the fourth quarter as "the easy part" because of retailers trying to unload excess inventory during the holidays by increasing advertising. The coming months, he said, are uncharted territory, saying he has no idea how long the recession will last.
As a precaution, Google has trimmed expenses such as dismissing 100 recruiters this month after cutting a significant number of contractors. Hiring has slowed considerably with the company adding 99 workers in the fourth quarter for a total of just over 20,222, in contrast to the hundreds of employees added to the payroll in some recent quarters.
At the same time, Google has cut or left in limbo several products that failed to catch on, most recently a service for advertising in print newspapers.
This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Showing posts with label Search Engine Marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Search Engine Marketing. Show all posts
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
The top business internet marketing tips (part2)
This is the second part of our Top 50 web marketing tips for small business people. You can access Part One here.
26- Why not create a “site map” – not only is this useful for your visitors, but will also help the search engines find their way around the site.
27- Make use of “header” tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to break up your site content and create some order to your pages. Search engines will see text contained within such tags as being relatively important and will rank pages accordingly. As ever, don’t overdo it though.
28. There’s no point optimizing your pages unless you know what people actually search for on the web. Use tools like wordtracker.com and Overture’s search engine suggestion tool to see what people are searching for.
29- Vary your TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags across your site’s pages. If your site pages are similar in content, try to focus on different aspects of each page’s contents rather than using the same keyword phrases each time.
30- If your site merits it, try to get included on news aggregator services like Google News. Each time your site is updated, these engines will spider your latest news and you should gain new visitors.
31- Age seems to be a very important factor in the way search engines rank websites. You might consider buying an older domain and benefiting from this longevity factor.
32- Try to get your site listed in the “Open Directory” at www.dmoz.org, as well as the Yahoo Directories. These are believed by many to have a strong impact on how “important” you site is seen to be by search engines.
33- If you contribute to web forums or bulletin boards, why not include your site URL in your signature.
34- Blogs are seen as a good and fast way to promote content-rich copy onto your website. They tend to be easily indexed by the major search engines and, if updated frequently, will add value to your site as a whole.
35- Always spell check your content before publishing online. A great article will suddenly become “poor” if you include poor grammar or spelling.
36- Don’t use too many different fonts or colors within your site. Try to keep everything simple, uniform and fast loading. It’s no good attracting hundreds of new visitors to your site with excellent web marketing practices only to see them leave right away because your site design is rubbish.
37- Include your site URL in your email signatures. Potential clients and visitors may just click on those links.
38- Use copyscape.com to see if your site content has been reproduced anywhere else on the web. You don’t want your content to be duplicated elsewhere as your pages may be penalised.
39- Try to keep your internal directory structure from being too deep. 3 levels is often the recommended amount of depth, e.g. site.com/news/local/todays-news.html
40- You can update your robots.txt file (in your file root) if you want to prevent the search engine spiders from visiting certain areas of your site.
41- Try to keep your URL’s short and meaningful. Don’t try and cram 20 words into each URL – everything should be done in moderation.
42- Avoid link farms and FFA (Free for all) links pages. These are frowned upon by many web marketing experts and are often referred to as “bad neighborhoods”.
43- Try not to use “dynamic” URLs as some search engines have trouble indexing such pages.
44- Some SEO experts recommend buying domains for the maximum time period possible as this would indicate that you’re serious (and not a “spammer”).
45- No problem if you pay someone to do your web marketing for you. But beware – if someone promises to get your site to “No.1 in Google” within 48 hours – this will mean you will be paying to ADVERTISE via Google Adwords. You will not be ranking organically for anything within 48 hours!
46- When building external links to your site, always think QUALITY, not QUANTITY. One good quality link from an established, authority site could do far more for you than hundreds of links from irrelevant so-called “directory” sites.
47- Don’t feel obliged to reciprocate links with other sites simply because another site owner has requested it. Have a good look at the other site before exchanging links.
48- Using “Bold” HTML tags not only tells your readers that the enclosed text is important – search engines will also take this into account when analyzing your page content.
49- Keyword density is important. Without overdoing it, make sure your chosen keyword phrases appear a reasonable amount of times within a page. Your keywords should always be faithful to the genuine content of your pages if you want to rank well.
50- Search Engine Marketing is an ONGOING activity. You should constantly review your search engine rankings, add new fresh content on a regular basis, and build up good quality links with similar sites to yours. And, don’t expect to rank No.1 within a few weeks.
........Hope to be useful
Source: bytestart.co.uk
26- Why not create a “site map” – not only is this useful for your visitors, but will also help the search engines find their way around the site.
27- Make use of “header” tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to break up your site content and create some order to your pages. Search engines will see text contained within such tags as being relatively important and will rank pages accordingly. As ever, don’t overdo it though.
28. There’s no point optimizing your pages unless you know what people actually search for on the web. Use tools like wordtracker.com and Overture’s search engine suggestion tool to see what people are searching for.
29- Vary your TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags across your site’s pages. If your site pages are similar in content, try to focus on different aspects of each page’s contents rather than using the same keyword phrases each time.
30- If your site merits it, try to get included on news aggregator services like Google News. Each time your site is updated, these engines will spider your latest news and you should gain new visitors.
31- Age seems to be a very important factor in the way search engines rank websites. You might consider buying an older domain and benefiting from this longevity factor.
32- Try to get your site listed in the “Open Directory” at www.dmoz.org, as well as the Yahoo Directories. These are believed by many to have a strong impact on how “important” you site is seen to be by search engines.
33- If you contribute to web forums or bulletin boards, why not include your site URL in your signature.
34- Blogs are seen as a good and fast way to promote content-rich copy onto your website. They tend to be easily indexed by the major search engines and, if updated frequently, will add value to your site as a whole.
35- Always spell check your content before publishing online. A great article will suddenly become “poor” if you include poor grammar or spelling.
36- Don’t use too many different fonts or colors within your site. Try to keep everything simple, uniform and fast loading. It’s no good attracting hundreds of new visitors to your site with excellent web marketing practices only to see them leave right away because your site design is rubbish.
37- Include your site URL in your email signatures. Potential clients and visitors may just click on those links.
38- Use copyscape.com to see if your site content has been reproduced anywhere else on the web. You don’t want your content to be duplicated elsewhere as your pages may be penalised.
39- Try to keep your internal directory structure from being too deep. 3 levels is often the recommended amount of depth, e.g. site.com/news/local/todays-news.html
40- You can update your robots.txt file (in your file root) if you want to prevent the search engine spiders from visiting certain areas of your site.
41- Try to keep your URL’s short and meaningful. Don’t try and cram 20 words into each URL – everything should be done in moderation.
42- Avoid link farms and FFA (Free for all) links pages. These are frowned upon by many web marketing experts and are often referred to as “bad neighborhoods”.
43- Try not to use “dynamic” URLs as some search engines have trouble indexing such pages.
44- Some SEO experts recommend buying domains for the maximum time period possible as this would indicate that you’re serious (and not a “spammer”).
45- No problem if you pay someone to do your web marketing for you. But beware – if someone promises to get your site to “No.1 in Google” within 48 hours – this will mean you will be paying to ADVERTISE via Google Adwords. You will not be ranking organically for anything within 48 hours!
46- When building external links to your site, always think QUALITY, not QUANTITY. One good quality link from an established, authority site could do far more for you than hundreds of links from irrelevant so-called “directory” sites.
47- Don’t feel obliged to reciprocate links with other sites simply because another site owner has requested it. Have a good look at the other site before exchanging links.
48- Using “Bold” HTML tags not only tells your readers that the enclosed text is important – search engines will also take this into account when analyzing your page content.
49- Keyword density is important. Without overdoing it, make sure your chosen keyword phrases appear a reasonable amount of times within a page. Your keywords should always be faithful to the genuine content of your pages if you want to rank well.
50- Search Engine Marketing is an ONGOING activity. You should constantly review your search engine rankings, add new fresh content on a regular basis, and build up good quality links with similar sites to yours. And, don’t expect to rank No.1 within a few weeks.
........Hope to be useful
Source: bytestart.co.uk
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
