Crafts Business Magazine

internet insites: Haiku and the Art of Internet Advertising:
Using Google AdWords To Drive Sales
By Jim Walker

If you happened to read about Google's public offering in August of 2004, you may have wondered how they raised more than $20 billion when the service they offer is free. If by some chance you have never been to Google (www.google.com), go there now and type in any word, phrase, name or idea that you have the slightest interest in, and within seconds, hundreds and sometimes millions of related web links will appear on the screen. Total cost to you for this truly remarkable and mind-boggling feat of global research: zero, zip, nada, nothing.

A $20 Billion Haiku Bonanza

So, what is the secret behind Google's billionaire-making Internet Bubble flashback? The answer is literally right there in front of your eyes on the Google results page - actually on the right-hand side of the screen where each time you search, a handful of small green rectangles appear listing website links with descriptive haiku-like marketing blurbs. These "AdWords" are basically electronic classified ads that advertisers have setup to appear on the screen based on particular search terms. For example, if you search on the phrase "handmade jewelry", Google will display a list of 2,680,000 web pages relating to handmade jewelry. If you are trying to sell handmade jewelry, you would certainly want to try and optimize your website to appear as high as possible in this listing, but with so many competing sites it will be no small feat to break into the top ten.

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