Google the Business Partner

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With the Google AdWords program, Internet advertising has been brought to the masses — and boy, people are eating it up.

AdWords (see Chapter 11) is a revolutionary system that lets anybody with a Web site advertise for a reasonable cost on the Google search results page. This exposure, on one of the Internet’s most highly trafficked domains, was unthinkably expensive and inaccessible in the past.

AdWords is stunningly innovative but also complicated. Here’s the gist: You hook a small ad to certain keywords and assign a price you’re willing to pay. That price is based on clickthroughs, which occur when a Googler conducts a search with one of your keywords, sees your ad on the results page, and clicks the ad to visit your Web site. Other site owners might have hooked their ads to the same keyword(s); if they offered a higher price per clickthrough, their ads are listed above yours. No matter how much you pay, your final bill is determined by actual visits to your site, and you can set a limit to the total amount you pay.

All this is handled automatically, making AdWords a surprisingly sophisticated system. The complexities are all explained in Chapter 11. AdWords isn’t a search service, but the program is definitely part of the Google lifestyle for entrepreneurial types with Web sites ready for increased traffic.

Note: You might be wondering whether the AdWords system destroys the famous integrity of a Google search. Have hordes of Internet advertisers purchased placement in the search results pages, warping the accuracy of Google’s engine? It’s a good question because other search engines have been in public-relations trouble over this issue. The answer, emphatically, is no — Google AdWords don’t pollute the purity of search results. The ads are placed over to the side, easily visible but not mingled with search results. Higher-priced sponsorships are placed above the search listing, in a manner that clearly differentiates them from the objective results.

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