Hutchinson, who was named our Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2008 Growing Business Awards, says the company is ploughing some of the profits from its core search division into developing the company’s own content.
“We’re quite reliant on Google. But Google changes the rules of the game quite frequently and we don’t have much control over that,” he says. “Sometimes the changes are positive, sometimes they’re not.
"We want to own our own property, which provides us with revenue streams that aren’t related to Google. If Google changes its strategy and for some reason we can’t get the same position we used to, we can experience a significant dip in profitability."
Being at the "whim of the search engine" hasn’t impacted on TrafficBroker too much this year. Turnover for 2009 is expected to hit £40m and Hutchinson says the company’s performing well off the back of a “very strong January”.
He says: “It’s traditionally one of the biggest months of the year because a huge amount of people search for various things – many are planning holidays or are searching for finance products like credit cards and loans – it’s a long month, it’s dark early and it’s cold outside. Meanwhile, last week’s snow also helped us – we experienced a massive spike in traffic.”
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