Google doesn’t break out its revenue for local, but we can speculate. Piper Jaffray has said that 10 percent of Google’s revenues are attributable to “geotargeting,” per Greg Sterling. Based on Q2 earnings of $2.46 billion, that would mean Google grossed about $240 million from local in Q2, up from $225 million in Q1.
We might cut Google’s figure a little for the U.S. Since Google makes 5 of 6 of its dollars in the U.S., Google’s U.S. figure for local might be closer to $200 million in Q2, or $800 million per year. If Google takes in 60 percent + of all the local search dollars in the U.S., as Borrell Associates estimates, that would make the entire local search category worth over $1.3 billion in 2006 (pretending that every quarter is the same).
Take out partner shares and whatnot — perhaps 60 percent of the pie — and Google’s net still ends up with $80 million from local in the U.S. in Q2, or close to $320 million per year.
Of this, how much is attributable to Google Local (which basically consists of Maps, Directions and Yellow Pages), and how much is based on “other” geotargeted placement? We have no idea.
But when it comes to usage….. Nielsen/Netratings reports that Google’s share in the local category is 21.4 percent. While that makes Google “king” of local, it is well below the company’s commanding 49.1 percent share in overall, U.S. Web search. Google’s smaller lead in local is no surprise, given the headstart of localizers like Yahoo, AOL, MSN and IAC. (Incidentally, as far as we know, this is the first time Nielsen/NetRatings has included Google Local in local category breakouts.)
Also worth noting this Hitwise post. They say Google local domains represent .03% of Google traffic.
If all the numbers we have are correct, Google is doing a lot of geotargeting outside their local domains, or those local domains are very, very lucrative.