Website Advertising

In the quarter that ended with December 2004, Google posted more than $1 billion in revenue from advertising. This was a 101% increase over the same quarter in the prior year. It’s apparent that Google has figured out how to make money from the Internet. Rather than use annoying popup ads, Google uses a more subtle, intelligent approach. The ads displayed on Google are based on the search term you enter. The ads appear as innocuous listings to the right of the websites returned in response to your query. If you “click through” to one of the advertising websites, that company pays Google some amount of money ranging from pennies to several dollars. The rate is determined by the popularity of the search term. If you want your site to appear when someone types “Boston Red Sox” it will cost a lot more than if you want it to appear when someone searches for “Middlesex North Registry of Deeds.” I suspect that we will eventually be looking for sources of revenue from the usage of our website. Some favor charging for access which I think would be a huge mistake. I think the better method of revenue production will be a Google-like advertising program. In anticipation of that, we’re thinking about adding a no-charge links page to our website on which we would have hyperlinks to websites of registry users such as law firms, real estate agencies, appraisers, surveyors and banks. We’ll probably call it “Our Customers.” So if you would like your website added to this page on an experimental basis, just send an email with the address of your website to mailto:lowelldeeds@comcast.net.