STATS: Comscore Time Again: Google Query Growth Solid, Yahoo Crappy

Ed: Lost in the noise of the conversation is the solid 18% overall growth. 

I wouldn't be surprised that comScore measured flat paid clicks in April, perhaps a decline year over year. With all the negative press received by comScore in March, they may be slow to report and trying to minimize the issue.

Google's paid clicks have hit a wall. It's the traditional retail problem of revenues from same store operations. When same store sales slow, overall growth slows. 

Google needs to monetize Youtube, DoubleClick, and Blogger to sustain revenue growth.

Comscore Time Again: Google Query Growth Solid, Yahoo Crappy

The first half of the monthly Comscore ritual is complete, and the results shouldn't trigger any alarms. This evening, Comscore released its April query share report. JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan reports that there were no major surprises:

• Google gained share: 61.6% of US queries, up from 59.8% in March--the first time Google's US share has exceeded 60%. Google's queries also grew 31% year-over-year, consistent with the growth rate of the past few months.
  
• Everyone else lost share: Yahoo dropped almost another full point, to 20.4%. Query volume shrank for the third consecutive month, down -1.5%. Slowly but surely, Yahoo's query share is heading toward zero. Microsoft, meanwhile, also lost share, but at least its queries grew year over year--up 9.4%. Ask? Don't ask. Down to 4.3%. AOL dropped, too, to 4.6%.
  
• Overall query volume grew at a steady 18%, the same rate as the last few months.
• Yahoo's continued loss of share is not good news as it tries to cut a deal with Microsoft. Microsoft's continued loss of share is not good news as it panics at the thought of a Google-Yahoo tie-up.
  

As a reminder, this report measures U.S. queries, not worldwide queries or U.S. paid clicks. The Comscore reports that set off the panic last quarter looked at U.S. paid clicks. Comscore will likely publish its April paid click report later this week.

Not yet bored to death by Comscore defending the accuracy of its data after getting blamed (unfairly) for costing investors millions? Then watch Comscore chairman Gian Fulgoni on Cramer here. Or just read the post below.

Google’s Blogger remained atop the blog site rankings with 38.4 million unique visitors, up 40% from 27.4 million in April ‘07:

WordPress was again up - an impressive 160% from April ‘07 - increasing its unique audience to 16.6 million.

Seventh-place HuffingtonPost.com also maintained its impressive growth - 99% - from a year earlier, but dropped down from it fifth-place ranking in March.