According to Bambi, analysts are confident in their projections for Google’s Q1 earnings.

[Google is] expected to post earnings excluding stock-based compensation of $1.97 a share, up 53% from the year-earlier period’s $1.29 a share.

Sales excluding expenses Google pays to its distribution partners are estimated to grow 85% to $1.47 billion from $795 million.

We’ll know if they’ve got it right, when Google announces after the closing bell today.

UPDATE: Here’s the official numbers…

Net income for the first quarter rose to $592 million, or $1.95 per diluted share, compared with the year-earlier quarter’s $372 million, or $1.29 per diluted share. Revenue rose 79 percent to $2.25 billion — compared with Wall Street forecasts for 63 percent to 78 percent growth.

WebProNews looks at Fortune Interactive’s SEMLogic technology and our newly launched SEMasphere and gives it a thumbs-up. From the article…

…instead of poring through reams of data and line after line on reports covering all manner of metrics, a SEM tech can look at a client’s sphere, and click on it for an assortment of details.

That’s where the work done by [Mike] Marshall and his team really shines. Visually, a client sphere and its surrounding spheres shows where work needs to be done to improve ranking; yellow and white stripes on a red sphere, and their placement relative to each other, show just how much improvement a site or page needs.

Todd Dunning tempts us to discuss his new tool by telling us we’d be “one of the very first” to point to it. Short pitches with an offer of being first, tend to work well with me (for those of you considering a pitch) so, I’m happy to oblige…

WhoLinked backlink tool
Show the other websites linking to yours. Fully customizable, this simple cut-and-paste javascript queries the search engines for your backlinks, then sends the results to your site’s WhoLinked box for your visitors to see.

Loren’s launching a new web directory named Umdum and is inviting readers to get a free listing.

Price again, this time with details of a study (pdf) conducted by Buzzmetrics which offers some interesting data on blog comments. As suspected, you can’t accurately monitor blogs, without monitoring comments.

As the report concludes…

…according to our analysis, comments constitute a substantial part of the blogosphere, accounting for up to 30% of the volume of weblog posts themselves…we show that usage of comments improves weblog retrieval (in terms of number of results), and is beneficial for ranking weblog posts in new, potentially useful ways.

We discuss comments as an indicator of the popularity of weblog posts and weblogs themselves, and find —as expected— that a wealth of comments in a weblog is a good indication for the significance of the weblog.

Gary Price sends word that Yahoo has been awarded a patent for what looks like a PayPal and Google Payments competitor.

Two things of interest.

1. Yahoo looks set to compete in the payment processing space.
2. How the heck did Yahoo get awarded a patent for something that appears to be offered by countless other services. (MikeOK, can I get an “amen”?)

The WSJ has Meckler and Calacanis discussing whether the typical blogger can make money from their blog.

Meckler says…”few people if any will ever make money from writing a blog.”

Calacanis says…If folks focus in on a niche and own it there is a good chance they could make half a living from blogging.”