RUSH: John Doe. Well, that’s interesting. Somebody wants to remain anonymous from somewhere in the United States. Hello, John, welcome to the program.
CALLER: Yes, sir, Mr. Limbaugh, can you hear me?
RUSH: Yes, sir, I do.
RUSH: Are you still at Google?
CALLER: No, sir, I worked there as an intern when I was in graduate school a few years ago.
RUSH: Okay. I’m just trying to get at how do you know what they’re doing now?
CALLER: Well, sir, I learned about the online advertising business, and it hasn’t really changed since six or eight years ago when it was first perfected by Google.
RUSH: Okay, well, tell us then, tell us about it.
CALLER: The way it works is that, for instance, with the Goldman Sachs SEC key word, a company or a political campaign can put in a bid on that key word or that phrase so that when someone does a Google search for that phrase an online auction is conducted instantaneously, and the highest bidding organization has its advertisement displayed there. So if you were the Obama campaign, you would bid enough so that the very top result would be the one that you want people to see, namely the anti-Goldman Sachs advertising campaign.
RUSH: Right, your website, ‘Save America Now’ or whatever it is.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: What does something like this cost, in your experience?
CALLER: Well, it can cost anywhere from five to ten cents a click or it can cost upwards of two to five or ten dollars a click depending on how popular and how much in demand those key words are. And so, for instance, every time you click on that ad, the campaign is charged anywhere from 25 to 50 cents. And I actually ran an experiment this morning —
RUSH: Wait, I want to get terms right. By ad you mean the first link that pops up in the search field after you’ve entered your key word search, it’s the top of the list of links, that’s the ad you mean?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And in this case it’s a sponsored link.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And a sponsored link is something that somebody has paid for —
RUSH: Right, but it doesn’t appear that way. It just appears, ‘Oh, look what our search turned up, why, look here.’ But the average Google user doesn’t know that he’s being steered into something that’s been bought and paid for.
CALLER: That’s correct, sir, they look very similar, but in this case you could tell it was deliberately placed there. But what your audience might be interested to know, sir, is that each time somebody clicks on that link, the campaign is charged anywhere from 25 to 50 cents or greater. And so I don’t want to tell anybody what to do, but again, your audience of millions of people might be interested to know that each time they click on that link, the campaign is charged a small fractional amount, but with millions of listeners, sir, that can end up having —
RUSH: Snerdley, do you know what he’s talking about? I have no idea what he’s talking about here?
CALLER: Sir —
RUSH: John Doe from somewhere in the country, uhhh, sometimes I’m pretty thick. Let me see if I understand this right. Every time somebody enters ‘Goldman Sachs SEC’ in the Google search field, the first link or ad that pops up will be whoever has paid the most to get their link or ad to pop up based on how much they’re willing to pay per click?
CALLER: That’s correct, sir.
RUSH: So if the 20 million people in this audience all entered ‘Goldman Sachs SEC’ and then clicked on the first result that came up at the top of the list, the person responsible behind that link — in this case the campaign — would be charged 25 to 50 cents.
CALLER: That’s correct, sir.
RUSH: That can add up to a lot of money if I’m hearing you right.
CALLER: It can, sir, and in many cases the organization will establish a daily budget of maybe $50 or $100 or $10,000 or $100,000 dollars. But in any case, each time there is a click, there is a charge against that organization, and when they reach their maximum budget for the day, their ad disappears.
RUSH: Oh, is that right?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
CALLER: That’s correct, sir. It’s typically a daily budget but in some cases it can be weekly or monthly, but whatever the case may be, when the charges add up to that budget, the ad disappears.
RUSH: In your experience, what is the highest price somebody has paid to get their ad at the top of the page?
CALLER: Well, sir, for very popular key words, for items that are in high demand or items that cost a lot, the car companies pay a tremendous amount, for instance, to have their ads appear at the top and to have customers click on those ads and get to their websites. It’s all based on how badly and how much somebody is willing to pay —
RUSH: A-ha.
CALLER: — to have that traffic come to them, sir.
RUSH: So John Doe, what I’m given to understand here is that most people going into Google to search think that their result is actually a clean production of ‘here are the best websites for you to figure out what it is you want to know,’ when in fact most of those are the result of paid advertisements?
CALLER: Sir, it’s not most of them, it’s just the top one or two that appear at the very, very top of the screen and usually they’re shaded in another color like pink so that —
RUSH: Pink. Pink.
CALLER: — a discerning consumer will know that that has been paid for.
RUSH: All right. Well, we’ve been clicking on that search term, ‘Goldman Sachs SEC,’ and you’re right, our staff here, we hit the limit. That ad is now gone. So it probably is gone for the day. Well, this is a great public service that has been performed here by John Doe from somewhere in the United States. Thank you, John Doe, very much.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You remember late in the second term of George W. Bush, if you entered the search term ‘miserable failure’ in the Google search field you would come up with stories on George W. Bush. And Google said, ‘There’s nothing we can do about that, that’s just the way it happens.’ But then when it began to hurt Obama — ’cause after Obama was elected you put in ‘miserable failure’ or whatever the algorithm was, it defaulted to whoever the president was. That was a way of hiding it being a direct default to George W. Bush. There was a time you could enter ‘miserable failure’ in a Google search field and you would end up with Obama. They found a way to fix it then.
George Soros said that the economic crisis was the culmination of his life’s work. So they might have a big budget, although many people are reporting to me that the White House link has now disappeared if you enter that search term, so the daily quota that they were willing to pay for has obviously been hit. ‘Miserable failure’ at Google was linked to the White House page, the official WhiteHouse.gov page. And so when Bush was president, ‘miserable failure,’ took you there. But when Obama assumed office it still took you there, and then Google found a way to change it. They said they didn’t know how it was happening. So when Obama was elected, it went to him, and Google said, ‘Oh, no, no, we can’t have that,’ so they changed it. So now ‘miserable failure’ does not take you to the White House website ever since Obama has been immaculated.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, guess what, ladies and gentlemen? In the Google search field ‘Goldman’ has now come up with their own search link that sends users using the same two search terms to Goldman’s response to the SEC’s fraud complaint. Now, Goldman can afford it, but they’re up against some really deep pockets. They’re up against George Soros. I’m convinced of it. I mean, Soros is out there saying that the economic collapse is a culmination of his life’s work. He’s said so.