• The New York Times , Tuesday, October 16, 2007 2:15 PM

When can a few clicks cost a group of PPC advertisers $1,000? When the keywords they bid on are some of the most costly AdWords terms -- and a reporter researching his paid search story clicks on them inadvertently.

Adam Liptak wound up working on a piece about Google and its auction-based pricing model, linking the popularity (and pricing) of specific keywords to current events, industry competition and other cultural factors. Liptak found out that terms like "Asbestos attorney" and "mesothelioma attorney Texas" were some of the most high-priced, and sought to figure out why they were priced so high -- and why people were willing to bid on them.

In the course of his research, he clicked on PPC ads that took him to various personal injury lawyers' sites - and then realized that he'd cost them about $1,000 in aggregate. (Hmmm... sort of raises the question of how Google would classify those clicks, doesn't it?)

Read the whole story at The New York Times »