Google: media starting to smell a scam
 

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm..._google30.html

This is an interesting article about sites using adwords / adsense on typo domains. It is clear that google profits pretty much directly from this sort of grey market cybersquatting, often providing the only income to sites that use this method.

For some people, Google also gives preferential listings to sites that their ad products on the page, and often allows these sites to buy keywords on the cheap, filtering them down to pages with significantly higher value ads on them. If you can buy 10 cent traffic and get 10% clickout on keywords worth over $1, there is a profitable business for the individual website owner, plus a HUGE profit for google as they make money on both ends of the transaction. This "upscaling" of surfers from cheap searches to expensive ones if certainly a profitable business.

I have often though that the suggested searches when you make a small typo in a google search often seem to point to results that have a full page of paid searches on them.

Alex

Riiiggghhhhhttt, of course :) . We in the web biz are so darned clever!