Thursday, 13 March 2008

Google Sponsored Links - anti-competitive?

When searching for 'IT jobs' Google says the average position for my adword campaign is 9.8. This would mean my ad appears on page 2 of any search near the 2nd or 3rd position.

But so far on any random test I have performed it has varied between position 12 and 16 i.e. an average of position 13.5.

I can only account for this by looking at the 2 google sponsored ads that 'load' the table of sponsored links thereby forcing everyone to pay more for the ads. But isn't this anti-competitive?

How do google pay themselves for these sponsored link ads?

I know I probably pay an extra 5p/click because of these 2 'free' ads by google themselves shoving my sponsored link down the list.

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