if you type "everquest" into google, and you see that list of sponsored sites on the right side, that those people get charged every time someone clicks one of those links? even if you don't even buy stuff?!?!

wow. now THAT is a HUGE waste of cash, IMO.

Now Harvey! It'd be a shame to give people ideas that they might trash IGE's and MySuperSales advertising budget by doing that! Bad, bad, bad, good Harvey!

Hmm, a script is coming to mind......

gosh! i'm much too innocent to suggest that everyone who frequents these boards goes to google everyday, just to type in everquest in the search and click every sponsor link that shows up on the right side a couple times...

that would be an evil way to strike a blow at a legitimate business like selling plat for cash.

shame on your for even thinking that way Pan!

Six months from now you'll notice strange repetetive charges on your VISA and come to find out that the script has developed an intelligence and is playing several store-bought characters on each server...


...and the script will know you know, and it will make use of a conveniently placed laser-digitization device to transfer you from the real world to it's own strangely geometric "computer" world where it can force you to compete for your survival against it's countless minions.

oh this SHOULD get a /cackle!

.... but i'm too busy in another IE window.... or five...

CACKLE!

How much do they get charged though?

I read about the Google advertising model. Basically you set aside a certain number of dollars a month, lets say $1000. And you have a bid price of anything up to something like $30 dollars a reference. It could be .35 cents, or $30 dollars. The advertiser with the highest bid gets top billing of all the advertisers lined up on the right side of the screen. Everytime someone clicks through, Google gets the bid amount. When the number of dollars is used up, your ad doesn't show up any longer. If someone bids higher than you, they get the spot above yours.

So lets say IGE bids $10 per referral and MysuperSales bids $9.50. IGE will win out and get a spot above MysuperSales. For $10 they'll get 100 referrals for 1,000 dollars.

I wish I thought of google first!

actually, they even get charged per IMPRESSION, which means that even if noone hits the link, they get a fee every time their link gets placed up there on the right side. it can get ugly if your not careful, as a sponsored link i mean.

I wonder though if Google has a way of differentiating between mean people just trying to run up the charges, like our friend Harvey here, or whether the meter always runs.

I wouldnt be surprised if they did filter it panamah, like 1 hit per ip per minute or something. Otherwise a brick on the f5 key at $10 a pop could knock out a $10,000 budget in an hour. Or they bid in fractions of a penny, especially with little competition. Must do some research!

What I find most ironic though is I never click the sponsored links, they are never the site I am after.

Hmm ok I did some reading. It said like 6 times that you only get charged for clicks, not impressions. Also you setup a daily limit, so cant run up a million in fees overnight, would just hit the limit I guess. Never saw anything about filtering out hits, just a warning that they would take action if you were doing it to your competitors. In the samples the ones with alot of clicks were paying about 25 cents a click, not sure how accurate that is though.

the clicks are based on a bid process.

so they pay whatever they bid for the word. and now that i think of it, you might be right about the impressions, but i seem to remember that there was some cost to the impressions...but not 100% about that.

and who says this was my intent anywho? all i did was bring up how crazy it is that these Pay-For-Plat sites were spending that kinda money to get their links there...that doesnt even mean that anyone has to buy anything. just use the link and the company pays google money.

btw, i am SOOOO gonna buy google stock when it goes public