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comScore Shares Sink After Blowing Google Call

By Joseph Weisenthal - Thu 17 Apr 2008 04:45 PM PST

More on the “gotcha mongers” theme: So who was the big loser from this evening’s Google (NSDQ: GOOG) report? It looks like comScore (NSDQ: SCOR). The traffic analysis firm had been banging the drum the loudest about a fierce slowdown in paid clicks. But as that didn’t materialize—or at least not to the extent predicted—it makes the company’s data look suspect. And now comScore shares are taking it on the chin, falling 8.4 percent after hours. It’s not conclusive that the fall is directly attributable to Google, but there is no other obvious news to explain it. And some analysts, including Ben Schachter at UBS, specifically predicted that the report would put comScore to the test. So how will comScore’s data be treated when it releases numbers for the coming months?

Posted in: Companies, Google, Information, Metrics, Research, Money, Earnings

Tags: comscore,

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From Dash Chang Thu 17 Apr 2008 08:16 PM

Google has managed search and international share growth well. However, this hides declining clicks in the US and devastation to the Long Tail of millions of US blogs.

The US Long Tail of millions of blogs and publishers lose.

Read at: (The New Economics of Advertising)

-Dash Chang

From henrycopeland Fri 18 Apr 2008 05:26 AM

Thank you comScore for fooling hundreds of journalists and analysts so we could buy Google at $430 a share. Your panels are a joke. The Google fiasco is an indictment of the numberless idiots— ad agencies, journalists, analysts, brands— who would rather rely on your patently wrong numbers than do their own hard thinking.

From Kris Tuttle Sat 19 Apr 2008 09:47 AM

Relying on one source of data, even a decent and objective one, is usually a quick way into the poor house. Even a large set of “channel checks” can paint a misleading picture. International performance is a notorious wildcard in trying to predict quarterly results.

I have to tip my hat to American Technology Group who was out pounding the table ahead of the report suggesting that the misleading ComScore data was setting up a huge short-term opportunity in Google.