200 Highest Paying Search Terms | Hacker News Reader

200 Highest Paying Search Terms

cwire.org

22 pointstlrobinson23 comments

This list is mis-titled. It should be called "Most Costly Adwords Clicks" because it doesn't account for search volume.

The highest paying search terms are the ones that generate the greatest revenues. Daily Revenue = (# clicks/day)(cost per click).

Fun game:

1. search these high value terms

2. click the ads

3. cost the personal injury and asbestos lawyers thousands

Yes, this is a game called "Click Fraud".

To me, Click Fraud implies something more competitive, like clicking the ads for a competitor or clicking the ads on your own web site. In this case, the clicking is straight anti-capitalist and is done purely out of spite.

In both cases, the clicking is done destructively. Don't be a dick.

Does one click really mean a $60 some dollar return? Somehow, I doubt that.

Why? If someone is searching for "mesothelioma treatment," that's a pretty specific thing. And if they click your ad, you might make thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars off the patient.

If you make money that way, it's totally worth it.

It certainly does seem to suggest that there might be a worthwhile business opportunity (at least for those with loose morals) in connecting people with personal injury lawyers.

If these guys are willing to pay that much to have people sent their way, there's got to be a way to take advantage of this.

Anyone want to visit my site:

treatmentformesotheliomafromcaraccidentlawyersinmichiganwhogivefreecarinsurancequotes.ru?

(Note: not a real website)

Are you joking? I just went there and made a cool 187.2 million! Now, all I have to do is complete a few offers and then get a few of my friends to do the same...

A couple years ago my wife thought she'd do an April Fool's joke for her wedding wiki. I convinced her to work in the word "Mesothelioma" just to see what Google Adsense did (please don't click on the ads! seriously.):

http://www.applebride.com/pages/Potentially_dangerous_guests

Heh, I actually tried to look at the ads, but I couldn't figure out how to get Firefox to display them. I disabled AdBlock and NoScript and still nothing.

Anyway, I am amused that I no longer know how to see ads even if I want to see them.

The CPA in my industry is on the order of $300+ and the lifetime value of a customer in wireless isn't much more than 2-3 times that.

Lawyers are getting off cheap for these qualified leads. (But then, their business scales with how many hours they can work.)

Not sure why michigan personal injury lawyers are near the top of the list

Presumably there were two or more Michigan personal injury law firms who got involved in a bidding war at some stage.

Something similar must be going on for mesothelioma (which I had to look up, but is the kind of lung cancer you get from asbestos. The adwords are, of course, all for personal injury lawyers, though many of them disguise this fact. I clicked on a few of 'em just to deprive them of some money).

Mesothelioma has been the top-valued search term for quite awhile. Aggressive bidding is obviously behind it, but that doesn't mean it's irrational: mesothelioma acquired from exposure to asbestos is very often actionable. It's not just Adwords; asbestos attorneys advertise disproportionately on TV. They are apparently easy and lucrative cases to win.

Well, that settles it. Mesothelioma market, here I come!

I'm noticing a good amount of DWI and DUI there too.

I searched and clicked a few. That's a few hundies charged.

This post should be removed. Clearly spam.

It's not spam (or at least I didn't intend for it to be spam). I just found it interesting that it's worth it for lawyers to pay so much for these search terms.

Perhaps I should have posted the article I found this through:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/us/15bar.html

Unfortunately the page itself links to lots of internal pages which are broken but clearly designed to trick the search engines (if the PHP scripts worked properly).

For what it's worth, I thought the article was pretty informative. It turns out that lawyers can pay a lot for this particular kind of case because asbestos is about the only cause of that kind of cancer. The lawyer just gets a settlement with parties rather than litigating for years.

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