Google makes 20 cents per search?

Google apparently now makes $0.20 per search from advertising revenue, according to Caris & Co. analyst Tim Boyd as quoted in the BusinessWeek article, "Why Yahoo's Panama Won't Be Enough".

Using data on total search queries, released by comScore, Caris & Co. analyst Tim Boyd estimates that Yahoo made on average between 10 cents and 11 cents per search in 2006, bringing in a total of $1.61 billion for the first nine months of the year.

Google, meanwhile, makes between 19 cents and 21 cents per search. As a result, it made an estimated $4.99 billion during the same period.

Quite an increase over the dime per search of two years ago.

The BusinessWeek article also has some interesting tidbits on Yahoo's Panama, the difficulty of monetizing non-search page views, and the potential of behavioral targeted advertising to improve targeting on non-search page views.

On the topic of early efforts at advertising targeted to past behavior, Barry Schwartz's post, "How Microsoft's Behavioral Targeting Works" at Search Engine Land has a nice excerpt from a recent WSJ article on how Microsoft's adCenter does coarse-grained behavioral targeting.

See also my previous posts, "Microsoft adLab and targeted ads", "Yahoo testing ads targeted to behavior", " AdSense will not do behavioral targeting?", and "Is personalized advertising evil?".

[BW article found via Don Dodge]