Google Earns $7.29 Billion in Huge Q3

Google was expected to report big third quarter profits, and they delivered. But today’s earnings even topped analysts estimates by a wide margin, as Google reported revenues of $7.29 billion, an increase of 23 percent compared to Q3 2009.

Here’s a breakdown of the Q3 results:

Google Sites Revenues

Google-owned sites generated revenues of $4.83 billion, (67 percent of total revenues), a 22 percent increase over Q3 2009 revenues of $3.96 billion.

Google Network Revenues

Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.2 billion (30 percent of total revenues), a 22 percent increase from Q3 2009 network revenues of $1.8 billion.

International Revenues

Revenues from outside of the United States totaled $3.77 billion (52 percent of total revenues), compared to 52% in Q2 2010 and 53 percent in Q3 2009.

Revenues from the United Kingdom totaled $840 million (12 percent of revenues, compared to 13 percent in Q3 2009.

Paid Clicks

As predicted, aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of Google’s AdSense partners, increased about 16 percent over Q3 2009 and increased about 4 percent over Q2 2010.

Cost-Per-Click

Estimates were low here, as the average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and Google AdSense partner sites, increased about 3 percent over the Q3 2009 and increased approximately 2 percent over the Q2 2010.

Cash

As of Sept. 30, cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were $33.4 billion.

Employees

Worldwide, Google employed 23,331 full-time employees as of Sept. 30. Google added nearly 1,200 employees during Q3, including 300 via acquisitions, and Google plans to continue hiring aggressively.

Display Ads

During an earnings call this afternoon, Google for the first time revealed revenue data on display and mobile advertising. Display ads (Google’s Display Network and DoubleClick non-text ads and YouTube ads) are expected to rake in more than $2.5 billion in revenue this year. However, Google refused to reveal whether YouTube was actually making any money from the company.

Mobile Ads

Mobile ads will add $1 billion in annual revenue this year. Google said that mobile searches aren’t “cannibalizing” the company’s online search business. Google called this the “future of search.”

Google Instant

Google said the impact of Instant search on revenue has been minimal, but says users “love it.” Also, Instant will be on mobile phones later this year.

Social

Regarding social, CEO Eric Schmidt almost sounded like he was describing what Bing and Facebook are trying to do with Bing’s new personalized search results, saying that Google will add additional social ranking clues. “We want to make search more personal,” he said. “And as we get more information about who your friends are we can make the search that much better. We are quite convinced that creates better search results for people who chose to give us that information.”