Alphabet Inc (GOOG)

[SeriousMoney]

Google Maintains Lead In Search, Ad Growth
Forbes.com, Maya Roney, 04.17.06, 12:31 PM ET

Global advertising could grow 35% in the first quarter of 2006, with search advertising growth continuing to outpace branded and Google continuing to lead in market share gains, according to a recent Merrill Lynch report.

"Checks with advertisers and agencies have indicated ongoing strength in the Internet advertising market, with no major disruptions during the quarter," said analysts Justin Post and Lauren Rich Fine.

The analysts expect Google to increase its advertising share in the first quarter to 30%, up from 28% in the fourth quarter of 2005. Yahoo!, Time Warner AOL and Microsoft MSN will likely lose advertising share as the first quarter is not a strong branded quarter, they said.

According to recent worldwide search query data from comScore, Google steadily gained share in the first quarter of 2006, while Yahoo! and Time Warner maintained market share, and the Ask network and MSN lost share.

The analysts attribute Google’s continued search query share growth to the company's diverting small amounts of search traffic to content sites like Google Finance, which is the top sponsored listing for search results on the term "finance," according to comScore.

The Merrill analysts have "neutral" ratings on both Google and Yahoo!, but favor Google near term.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/04/17/google-0417markets08.html?partner=yahootix