A lot of people feel that, as its rising stock price and market share seem to show, Google’s bulletproof. One possible problem with this outlook rested with the cost of Google’s keywords and what advertisers were getting in return. But now even those concerns are being laid to rest.
Henry Blodget and the readers of Silicon Alley Insider deserve credit for addressing the issue; as Blodget wrote, he was “terrified by the universality of the belief that Google is going to the moon.” Of course, we’ve seen more than a few people screaming about a soon-to-burst bubble. Yet the main point is well made.
So one of Blodget’s SEM friends responded, saying, “Almost across the board (based on vertical) other engines show a better ROI than Google, but 1) it’s not enough to matter (usually); and 2) volume stinks anywhere outside of Google. In addition, it is still almost like swearing to suggest another engine to most clients. I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten the evil (stink) eye when I uttered the words Yahoo and MSN.”
Google’s still looking pretty good, then, despite whatever bubble may or may not exist around it. And in a way, that makes sense – even if Google is one of the main factors behind the bubble, it’s also in the best position to survive any disasters.
