Just How Good Will Google's Q2 Numbers Be?

Google reports Q2 earnings on Thursday, so consider this a preview: Search ad spending jumped 24 percent in the last quarter, says Efficient Frontier.

The search engine marketing company’s estimates fit nicely with Wall Street, which thinks Google will post a revenue jump of 22.5 percent, on average. No surprise there: Google (GOOG) pretty much is the search market–hence the Microsoft (MSFT)/Yahoo (YHOO) Hail Mary. And analysts usually take input from firms like Efficient Frontier to get to their numbers anyway.

Okay. Anything else we should know? Here are a couple factoids: Efficient Frontier attributes the rise in large part to a big bump in retail spending, and says cost-per-click prices have jumped 18 percent in the last year. Left unsaid, so I’ll say it anyway: These numbers are compared to pretty soft comps from last year.