Billion Dollar Google

A recently released report states that Google provided roughly $1 billion in economic activity in Ecreativeworks’ home state of Minnesota in 2010. The report lists the Google-generated economic activity for every state in the US, which totals an estimated $64 billion. The mapped out, state-by-state report of Google’s economic activity can be found here.

Since the report was created by Google themselves, it’s entirely possible that they’re taking some liberties as to what accounts for “economic activity.” The report is based on the average number of clicks a company received from Google searches or ads, and assumes that every dollar spent on Google advertising equates to eight dollars in profit for the company doing the advertising.

This seems like a rather high cost-to-profit ratio—how often does one receive an 800% return on any kind of investment?—but given the nature of ecommerce and Google’s role in it, it’s probably impossible to know for sure just how much Google actually contributed to the reported economic activity.

But, if the numbers given are anywhere near correct, and given what we know about the effect page rank has on web traffic, the report gives 64 billion reasons why your company needs to succeed in search engine rankings, particularly on Google.

No matter how valid the report figures are, it is almost certain that Google’s economic impact is at least a few dollars greater than that of Ask Jeeves.

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