Google "Economic Impact" Report Shows How Google Contributes To Local Economies

Google has released a report that shows its economic contributions to local economies in the US. Timed to coincide with National Small Business Week this is something of a “charm offensive” and effort to burnish Google’s recently tarnished corporate image:

Google’s not just a search engine. We’ve also helped hundreds of businesses in every U.S. state to grow. Across the U.S., Google’s search and advertising tools generated $54 billion of economic activity in 2009.

Full of data, the report is interesting and designed to showcase how Google helps “the little guy” in all 50 states (small businesses). It’s partly intended to combat the notion that Google is a corporate behemoth riding roughshod over consumer privacy and smaller competitors — the images associated with recent anti-trust and privacy complaints leveled against the company.

With a little effort, one could estimate the total number of Google advertisers in the US from the data disclosed in the report.

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: It’s disappointing Google didn’t release an easy-to-read table of the data state-by-state, so that people could easily discover where the most activity is generated. So, I did a quick skim to pull some figures:

California was tops for most economic activity generated, $14.1 billion – or 26% of Google’s total economic estimate
Alaska was at the bottom, with a tiny $16 million generated — or 0.30% of Google’s total economic estimate

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling

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“Google’s not just a search engine. We’ve also helped hundreds of businesses in every U.S. state to grow.”

Google may indeed help the little guy, but it’s at the expense of some other company that use to receive revenue from small businesses. I can think of several small business resources our business sent money to pre-Google, those include (but not limited too)… AT&T Yellow Pages, Yellow Book, United Yellow Pages, numerous local newspapers (LA Times, Santa Monica Register, LA Weekly, etc.), Chamber of Commerce, Local Business Networking Groups, several Direct Mail marketing companies, local fairs and events (like LA Marathon, 5K & 10K events), and many more.

I would not be surprised to find that is the case with most small businesses in the USA. Money that used to go to local advertising campaigns now goes to Google adwords campaigns.