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Classic set-up:

PM: About 0.2% of searches

Exec: So basically 1%

The type of queries that people use the lucky button for might not be average revenue queries. They might skew towards higher value inventory.

If revenue attributable to ads was over 10 billion at the time of writing, then it adds up.

Edit: 3.66 billion in 2007, so yeah, doesn’t add up.

I wonder if the analysis was performed a few years following the statement of 1%.

Being generous, one would take into account the folks who click to the second, third, etc page of results. But I highly doubt there's a fat enough tail there to amount to much.

But the answer is probably embedded in that sentence. If 1% of searches use it, that's a fairly huge volume of traffic.

10 billion search queries a year seems about right.