Online advertising hasn’t been too flourishing for Google lately, industry-tracker comScore reported. Compared to the same period last year, the January “ad clicking” has maintained approximately the same values, and not only that, but fell seven percents from December 2007. The seven percents however could be explained by the fact that the holiday season had its peak at the end of the year.

Google’s shares dropped 4.57 percent on Tuesday, after comScore’s Monday report, closing at $464.19, $22.25 less than the day before. What this goes to show is that despite the amazing growth Google has had over the years and the advantage it has taken compared to its competitors, this still doesn’t make it invulnerable to a negative trend.

“The difficulty is that Google is being measured by high growth year over year that has been holding the stock price up,” analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group said, AFP reports. “Any reduction in growth rate is going to have a catastrophic effect. When the market is already nervous about going into a recession the combinations will cause the stock to trade down.”

Is this as tragic as some may think? Analysts split opinions, as some consider the slowdown to be blown out of proportions. It may not be the best first quarter for Google, but this can’t mean the end of the road, can it?

Google declined to comment the report, but what it is known for a fact is that Google’s numbers and comScore’s report differ. According to Google, not only did ads click increased 30 percent in the fourth quarter of last year compared to a year before, but a lower growth rate could be explained through the website’s new design, that prevents users from accidentally clicking the ads.

There are a lot of factors that could influence a downward trend in ads click and explain Google’s situation at this point in time. For example, the consumers searching multiple adds for the best prices, which in times proves to be a no-win situation for advertisers, and thus lead to a lower number of ads to click on.