Google has reported revenue and profit rises for the 2015 first quarter, however a stronger US dollar impacted results with the search giant falling short of Wall Street expectations.Google’s revenue of US$17.26 billion (around $22.21 billion) was up 12 per cent year-on-year, with net income of US$3.59 billion up 3.9 per cent.
On average, analysts had expected revenue of US$17.5 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, excluding payments to companies that syndicate its ads, Google’s revenue rose 14 per cent to US$13.9 billion, with analysts polled by FactSet having projected revenue on that basis of US$14 billion.
“Excluding the net impact of foreign currency headwinds, revenue grew a healthy 17 per cent year-on-year,” Patrick Pichette, Google CFO, stated of the results. “We continue to see great momentum in our mobile advertising business and opportunities with brand advertisers.”
Google’s paid clicks were up 13 per cent year-on-year, however its cost-per-click was down 7 per cent.
As reported by the WSJ, while growth in smartphone usage has resulted in more clicks on ads, marketers are also paying less for clicks; and, while the drop in ad prices was larger than expected, the WSJ reported Pichette as stating it was a sign of growth at the company’s YouTube site.
Google has recently introduced changes to its search rankings to include “mobile-friendliness” as one its criteria used to rank search results.
Under the changes, with searches carried out via mobile, Google now uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal that weighs in favour of pages formatted for mobile phones
“They still own the search business,” Bloomberg reported Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst at Rosenblatt Securities, as stating. “But people are finding better ways – or at least alternative ways – to find the information that they want. That can be Twitter; that can be your friends on Facebook.”
