Wired has an analysis of what happened to Google’s share price when it became known that the growth in clicks per ad has stopped growing. Google’s stock closed down over 3% on news that the February click through rate grew only 3% in February compared with a year earlier and January didn’t rise at all on a year earlier. But Wired points out that the figures are the result of some changes in Google’s advertising policies.

The Mountain View-based company said in January that the drop in click-through rates is a result of its efforts to boost the usefulness of each click to its advertisers’ sales performance. For instance, the company decreased the space around a word that would result in a click, so more clicks would be intentional.

Some are arguing that Google’s advertising should rise even faster with the changes:

Rob Sanderson, an analyst with American Technology Research, said per-click revenue will rise immediately if advertisers see more value in each click, because they’ll pay more for them at auction.

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