OT: Google Advertising Gotchas...

Here's a few things that I've learned that will help you keep your
cost down if you should decide to advertise on Google.

The most important thing:
They're liars... plain and simple.
Remember that.

Why? This is supposed to be an "Automated Bid" system. They tell you
to bid high because you will never be charged more that a competitor
bids for the same keyword (or phrase). This is utter bull. If you bid
a dollar per click, you can bet your rearend that you'll be paying
between 60 cents and a dollar per click regardless of what ANYBODY
else bids. I have several key phrases that I'm the ONLY person bidding
on. You do a search for these key phrases and my site is the ONLY one
that comes up under "sponsored links". I had bid a dollar per click on
these key phrases... I was getting billed at 60+ cents per click for
every click from those key phrases. When I saw this I thought "WHAT
THE F$&%CK?!?!" I reduced my "bid" to 5 cents on those phrases. Guess
what... I'm STILL the only one that comes up for those key phrases,
but now they can't bill me more than 5 cents per click. What you have
to do is actually Google each key word (or phrase) and see where you
come up in the search. Keep lowering your bid on that key word until
you start to drop in the listings. Then you can decide how much you're
willing to pay to be where in the listings. This can be time consuming
if you have a lot of keywords (I've got probably a hundred), but you
pretty much have to do this or these people will eat every penny you
make, if not more.

I can't stand lying, thieving con artists and it bugs me greatly that
I have no choice but to deal with a gang of them if I want to do
business on the Internet.

I'm thinking that this "bidding" system is a (or yet another) class
action suit in the making.
.