Google increased its revenue and profit in the third quarter, as its top executives said the results were good while pledging to manage the business with a long-term outlook despite global economic challenges.

Google reported revenue of US$5.54 billion for the quarter, which ended Sept. 30, up 31 percent compared with last year's third quarter.

Deducting the commissions Google pays to its advertising partners, revenue came in at US$4.04 billion, slightly below the $4.05 billion consensus expectation from analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

Net income was US$1.35 billion, or $4.24 per share, compared with $1.07 billion, or $3.38 per share, in 2007's third quarter.

On a pro forma basis, which includes one-time items, net income was US$1.56 billion, or $4.92 per share, exceeding analysts' consensus expectation of $4.75 per share.

"We had a good third quarter with strong traffic and revenue growth across all of our major geographies thanks to the underlying strength of our core search and ads business," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a statement Thursday.

"While we are realistic about the poor state of the global economy, we will continue to manage Google for the long term, driving improvements to search and ads, while also investing in future growth areas such as enterprise, mobile, and display," he added.

(More to come.)