Google this

As Google bares its soul to financiers so the VCs can cash out, one key metric to examine is this — how many searches a day?

Today Google claims to serve “more than 200 million searches a day”… the same number it was claiming a year ago. We can assume that is a lowball, but by how much? Is the real number 300 million or 800 million?

(God forbid it is only 225 million, which would mean Google’s core business is underperforming the Internet’s own core growth rate.)

This searches per day number should be central in Google’s IPO documents. If you have time to read ’em and find the number, please drop me a line.

The only thing more astonishing than Google’s reluctance in sharing this number over the last few years has been the press’s reluctance to actually ask for an accurate number.

This is an old story, btw. To read more on the history of Google’s intense reluctance to pubicly update this crucial number — and the press’s inability to probe for the number — read this 12/02 Blogads post.

(Funnily enough, you can still find the Google claim “Today, Google responds to more than 200 million search queries per day.” on this “press overview” page, but I can’t find the same page when you drill down through Google’s navigation system via either the press center or the corporate overview page.

Am I missing something, or is Google actually burying this metric, one that its prospective investors (and competitors) should find crucial to evaluating the company’s health?