Good news from Google. Revenue up, Margins up, Ad rates holding-ish. It's clear - more advertising is going digital.

Google's core revenue is up and beats analysts expectations. Its shares have increased by +5% and notably its Ad rates, although a slight fall, seem to be "holding". Good news.

A 9.83 billion usd in revenue in the 4th quarter is up from 8.13 billion usd last year, growing both their core business and their margins - the sweetest thing a business can do. A +23% growth in international revenues too with cost-per-click (CPC) rates down only 6% whereas it had previously been on a bigger slide.

The 4th quarter is a critical, a seasonal time for Ad sales (Christmas).

One of the reasons is the growth in mobile search where users access Google by smartphone and those CPC rates are always lower. So if you like, the averages are down because of "blended product". Or in other words, an increase in its lower-cost product brings the overall price down.

But a "hold" on Ad rates is good news for the Ad community - things may be bottoming out. Clearly too, there's increased demand for Google Advertising and so, one might assume, more demand in general. It's clear - more Advertising is going digital.

Equally too, it must be remembered that Google hasn't yet seen the full force of the recent launch of Facebook Search which has to eat into their business. Google's Motorola Mobility acquisition too, hasn't paid dividends showing ongoing losses of 353 million usd in this quarter. But they've indicated that this is now a focus to turnaround.

It has already sold the Motorola set-top TV business for just over 2 billion usd.

All in all, encouraging numbers not just for Google, but for the trade itself. They are market leader and so tend to show the trend. And this trend is up.

It came too on the day that RIM who owns Blackberry Crackberry, say that they'll launch their new phone on January 30th. And that, in contrast to Google, is really make or break time.

But this is all good.

Facebook enters Search. One big competition for Google.

Facebook are about to enter Search.
And nobody is better placed to take on the might of Google.

Investors are nodding their heads too, giving it a thumbs up by rocketing the share price. Revenues from search, could well compensate Facebook's problems on mobile and give them a whole new Ad frontier. It's big business and perfect for Facebook.

At the moment, Facebook search is about finding people and frankly, a very poor effort, allowing you to find names only. So if you search a common name - John Smith - you'll end up with millions of results and no real way to refine them. So the engine is poor....at the moment.

However, clearly Facebook has great content. So imagine that perhaps you'd like to find a car/city/hotel which your friends like? Or a brand on Facebook your colleagues like? Anybody I know work for a company I'm about to join? and so on.

Using "likes" it can bring search into relevance by giving me results which like-minded people might suggest and recommend. In other words, not just a list of good restaurants, or indeed a list of 5 star restaurants, but rather, restaurants that my friends like and therefore I might too. Relevance.

Google returns about 3 billion searches a day. Facebook returns about 1 billion, without "even trying" says The Zuck.

"Search is interesting. We do on the order of 1 billion queries a day and we’re basically not even trying. Today with search the vast majority of it is people trying to find people, but there’s also a meaningful portion of queries where people are trying to find Pages, brand Pages, other business Pages — so there’s a bunch of that that actually does link to commercial behaviour, and I think there’s a big opportunity there and we just need to go do that." Mark Zuckerberg last Tuesday.

The betting at the moment is that Facebook Search will not be a standalone but rather incorporated better onto Facebook pages where it will live, and which makes total sense. It's an easy integration and an even easier marketing job.

In June, it already renamed its Search box from just "Search" to "Search for people, places and things", a sign of what's to come.

Facebook has a lot of work to do but it has the cash and this provides a good solution to its never ending saga of generating more revenue. It's surely a winner.

In July, Techcrunch reported that Facebook had already started to test "sponsored results" allowing advertisers access on a ppc (pay per click) basis. 

And now with Zuckerbergs comments, where as an IPO floated company he has to be real careful, we know it's coming.

Early adopters please note.
It's going to be a real opportunity for brands.

Actually when you spell check 'Zuckerberg' you get 'Knickerbockers'.
Interesting start.