In response to “numerous inquiries” about Google’s first quarter results, comScore’s Andrew Lipsman blogged again yesterday about why the paid click data released by the Internet research company differed from Google’s:
The main difference between the paid clicks trends reported by Google and comScore can be traced to the fact that the comScore paid click data cited in financial analysts’ reports (and subsequently reported by the media) are U.S. data only. Analysts’ efforts to use comScore’s domestic data to estimate Google’s global trends were misguided. In fact, a detailed analysis by comScore of the global paid click data publicly reported by Google indicates that Google’s U.S. trends are:
1) Weaker than their global trends, but
2) Are consistent with comScore’s U.S. paid click data
It also needs to be noted that comScore does not currently provide a measurement of global paid click data and has never claimed that its U.S. data can be used to “predict” global trends. In fact, in late February, comScore posted on its blog a warning of the potential misuse of its U.S. paid click if used to predict Google’s first quarter global financial results. Unfortunately, despite this, many in the financial community and in the media have chosen to do otherwise.
See the comScore post entitled Reconciling comScore’s and Google’s Paid Click Data Part 2: It’s the U.S. versus the World for more on the topic.
