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ComScore plays Google whipping boy, but Web statistics firm actually saved search giant's bacon

WhippingBoy.jpgIn February, ComScore reported underwhelming growth in clicks on Google ads in the U.S. Google shares sank below a 52-week low for the first time in the company's history. Then, yesterday, Google reported 42 percent year-over-year revenue growth, surpassing expectations. Burned, Wall Street traders reacted harshly toward ComScore, dropping the company's shares by 8.4 percent after hours. Today, ComScore wants to remind the world that it never said Google's revenues would sink and that it only measures clicks on Google ads in the U.S., not internationally But really, Google investors owe ComScore a large debt.

WIthout making its numbers so readily available for analysts such as Citi's Mark Mahaney to misinterpret, expectations for Google's first-quarter revenues never would have sank to numbers the search giant so easily reached. All it took for Google to blow past them was a smidgen of international growth coupled with a plunging dollar.

11:40 AM on Fri Apr 18 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
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