Going into this afternoon’s earnings report, analysts had been expecting to see Google report third quarter earnings of $8.74 per share, but actual earnings came in well above estimates at $9.72 a share.

Revenues during the quarter were $9.7 billion, higher than the $7.22 billion that Wall Street had been expecting to see.

In addition to strong ad revenues, Google also has seen nice growth in revenues stemming from its highly successful mobile operating system, Android. Last year the company saw annual revenue of $1 billion from its mobile business, but says that it is currently on track for $2.5 billion as Android continues to gain in popularity and is now the #1 mobile operating system on the market.

Google also shed some light on the strength of its new social network, Google+. The company announced that it had 40 million users sign up with the service, with 3.4 billion photos being uploaded so far to the network. The numbers are greater than analysts had expected, and a good sign that Google is making some progress in its competition with social media giant Facebook.

The company also announced that it had added an additional 2,585 employees during the quarter, lifting its total workforce to 31,353.

Google’s dominance of the U.S. search market continues to grow. As of the end of last year, the company controlled 74% of U.S. searches, and by the end of this year that is expected to grow to 76%.

The stock is currently trading up $35.61 at $594.60 (+6.4%) in after hours trading.

As widespread as twitter has become, it is hard to remember that the twitter was lost just 4 years ago. It has come a long way in the past 4 years, and now twitter is trying hard to change its image from a start up internet company to one of the big internet companies.

It announced a couple new features that will improve user experience including geo-location services, a database of places and additional metadata for posts.

For the first time, twitter also released information on its size, stating that it currently has 106 million registered users, and its picks up a pretty impressive 300,000 new users each day. That is some pretty impressive growth.

Its users currently post approximately 55 million posts each day, and that number is rising.

The company realizes that its service is not the easiest thing in the world for new users to understand, and is trying to change that. Its chief executive, Evan Williams, stated that “It’s amazing it’s grown so fast given how hard it is to use.”

It also has introduced “promotional tweets” that will act just like any other tweet, but will be actual promotions that vendors supply to twitter. The tweets that have the most resonance will remain, and those tweets that do not will go away.

It is one solid way that twitter plans to add to its bottom line as it continues to develop its revenue model.

Ford Motor (NYSE: F) hit a new 52 week high today of 9.14 before afternoon profit taking came in and pushed shares lower. The stock has been very strong lately, and recently was considered to be the stock of the year from the writers of CrossingWallStreet. Shares finished the day down slightly at $8.94, down 0.45%.

Technology giant Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) also rose to a new 52 week high today. Shares of the company hit a day today of $30.14. Shares of MSFT finished today trading session up 0.4% to $30.11, just three pennies off its new 52 week high.

Gold prices continue to rise, and Yamaha Gold (NYSE: AUY) has been benefiting from the recent gold rush, setting a new 52 week high earlier in the session at 13.49. After hitting another new high today, the profit takers came in and sold the stock off a bit, which ended the day slightly lower at $13.15, down 0.23%. Gold prices rose as high as 1146.5 but closed down 70 cents to 1,140.5.

What are your favorite stocks right now? Which stocks do you see rising to new highs in the near future?