Google announced its first quarter results a few minutes back and the results were better than street expectations. Google’s Q1 EPS was $4.84 and the revenue was $3.7 billion. Amid fears that the economic slowdown would have a negative result on Google’s paid ads program, adwords, Google announced that paid clicks were up 20% in the first quarter.

So I guess the paid search marketing world has nothing to worry about and atleast Google is continuing to see an increase in revenue from it’s pay per click ads.

I, often come across question regarding search marketing in India. The most common question is “how many searches are carried out in India” and “To what extent could I, as an Indian company targeting the domestic market, leverage search marketing to help me increase my bottom line”.

Today, on 7th December 2006, there was an article in The Financial Express that gives a few India-centric figures.

They say that there are 40,000 advertisers targeting Indian we users, who conduct over 1 billion searches a month. Out of this, over 300 million searches carry ads, eventually resulting in 5 million click-through’s every month.

IAMAI estimates 37 million internet users in India and a majority of them search online, making them perfect targets for search marketing.

So I guess, paid search marketing has finally come of age in India.