crobb305 - 6:55 pm on Oct 18, 2012 (gmt 0)

As much as I would like to blame this on the ridiculous serp results in the last year or more I have to say Wall Street seems to over exaggerate everything

I know a couple of webmasters who had to eliminate their Adwords campaigns after Penguin/Panda. Google may like to think that they are pushing webmasters to Adwords, but the opposite may be happening (though I obviously can't prove it). If my site is eliminated from the SERPS, my revenue drops, and my ad budget goes down. Period. This cumulative effect could account for the drop in click prices (despite an increase in actual clicks).

FTC Antitrust case, and other issues, won't help matters. I'm sure the search team will laugh off such speculation, but this will be for the shareholders to determine.