Truth 4. Search: It’s like the stock market

The more you think about the stock market, commodities markets, and the auctions for search engine position, the more similarities you see. There are a limited number of shares of any stock, and in the commodities markets, there are fixed quantities of pork bellies or frozen concentrated orange juice. Buyers of stocks or commodities use internal information, external information, formulas, and gut instinct to bid within the marketplace. (Some even try to use insider information.) The reason buyers bid high is that they believe the true value of the stock or asset to be greater than the asking price in the marketplace.

Economists have a term that they apply to markets, marketplaces, and economic ...

Get The Truth About Pay-Per-Click Search Advertising now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.