Fresh off her win at the Entreverge awards, Briana Warner and her Portland bakery business are now being featured in a national report from Google about the economic impact its search engine and advertising platforms have in the country.
Google’s economic impact report is a publicity stunt, but it does include some noteworthy state-by-state numbers.
The Internet giant claims in its report that its search engine and advertising platforms helped provide $286 million in economic activity for Maine businesses, website publishers and nonprofits in 2013. That’s out of a nationwide total estimated impact of $111 billion. That finding is based partly on a “conservative estimate” that for every $1 a business spends on AdWords, it gains $8 in revenue through Google’s search engine and AdWords.
The Google economic impact report notes that 5,500 Maine businesses and nonprofits benefited from using Google’s advertising tools, AdSense and AdWords, in 2013.
One company in each state was highlighted to put an entrepreneurial face to the story. In Maine, Google chose Warner and her company, Maine Pie Line, which makes “pies like your mother never made,” to feature in its economic impact report. (Last month, Warner and Maine Pie Line won an Entreverge award for her entrepreneurial success.)
“The Internet was really the first place we turned to when we started,” Warner says in the report. “People started walking into the bakery, even though we don’t have a sign outside, and saying, ‘Hey, I saw your website online.’ We were getting emails through the site—‘When are you going to open up a store? Can we order pies for the holidays?’”
Warner claims 75 percent of her walk-in business is a result of customers seeing her website online or reading a story about her online.
In its report, Google also highlighted the “strongest online business community” in each state with an eCity Award. Maine’s strongest online business community? Scarborough.
Google and independent research firm Ipsos MORI analyzed the strength of businesses’ online presence in cities in every state using AdWords data coupled with a review of businesses’ use of e-commerce, blogs and social media. (You can read more about the methodology here.)
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