SEO Blog

Google put forth a press release today announcing its 2005 fourth quarter results. Despite positive earnings, stock plummeted.

“We are very pleased with our results for the fourth quarter as we achieved excellent performance across our businesses,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. “We generated significant revenue growth in our core search and advertising business, driven by continued strength in traffic and monetization. We will continue to invest significantly as we develop innovative new products and as we extend our core technologies to new user access points and to different channels.”

For Q4, 2005, Google reported total revenues of $1.919 billion, an 86 percent increase over Q4, 2004, and a 22 percent increase over Q3, 2005. Its net income was $372 million, up from $204 million the year before.

Despite this, Google stocks dropped after revenues failed to meet analyst expectations, combined with the Federal Reserve’s announcement of an interest rate increase to curb inflation. Google stock fell to $364.49, dropping 15.8 percent.

According to reports, both MSN and Google have refused to appear before a Human Rights Caucus set for this Wednesday. The Caucus was called to delve into China’s compliance demands on American Internet companies. Yahoo! has still not stated whether or not it will attend.

Recently, Google has come under heavy scrutiny for abiding by China’s strict censorship laws and omitting information from its Chinese based search site.

Last week Google, Yahoo! and MSN were called to appear before a congressional hearing set for February 16th, to answer questions about their compliance with Chinese law. Thanks to the San Francisco Chronicle for the information.

A recent statement by MSN’s Ken Moss (General Manager, MSN Web Search) defends Microsoft’s decision to hand over search records to the US Department of Justice. On the MSN Search Blog, Moss states that even though records were submitted to the feds, user privacy was not compromised.

According to Moss, “privacy of our customers is non-negotiable and something worth fighting to protect.”

More from the blog:

Over the summer we were subpoenaed by the DOJ regarding a lawsuit. The subpoena requested that we produce data from our search service. We worked hard to scope the request to something that would be consistent with this principle. The applicable parties to the case received this data, and the parties agreed that the information specific to this case would remain confidential. Specifically, we produced a random sample of pages from our index and some aggregated query logs that listed queries and how often they occurred. Absolutely no personal data was involved.

CAN see how frequently some query terms occurred.
CANNOT look up an IP and see what they queried
CANNOT look for users who queried for both “TERM A” and “TERM B”

Google slapped up its new toolbar today. The version 4 beta has quite a few new features.

“Now we’re putting the tools of innovation in the hands of our users. We’ve opened up the Google Toolbar to enable them to create their own features and customize their search experience,” said Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience at Google.

The new features include:

• Enhanced Search Box — as you enter words into the search slot, the toolbar offers spelling corrections, and tries to figure out what you’re looking for by displaying a dynamic list of popular searches as you type.
• Custom Buttons — you can now add your own custom buttons. Buttons can be selected from the Google Button Gallery, or you can create your own buttons from scratch.
• Bookmarks —you can now store your toolbar bookmarks online, and access them from any computer that has the toolbar installed. This requires a Google account.
• Send To — lets you share web site addies, text messages or blogs with other users.
• Google Account Sign In — you can now sign into your Google Account right off the toolbar.