Google superpowers update

There’s been some discussion of my last post on Edward Felten’s Freedom to Tinker as well as by private email, so I thought I’d post a bit more detail on costs as well as a cautionary note.

It costs $5 to set up an AdWords account.  You can specify the maximum that you'll pay per click and the maximum that you'll pay in one day.  Since an average name is unlikely to have much competition for ad space, your per-click rate will probably never go above the minimum per-click charge of $.05.  You probably have to search for yourself and click through once or twice to make sure that google sees a click through rate high enough to take you seriously, so add 10 cents to the setup costs.  Total cost to start: $5.10

Going forward, assuming a very high click through rate of 1%, you'd be spending $1 for every 2,000 times somebody googles you.  That's pretty cheap.

Of course, there's the possibility of someone trying to disrupt your harmless narcissistic endeavor by engaging in several obvious types of odious behavior.  There’s absolutely no benefit to the attacker for doing this, so you’ll probably go unmolested unless somebody really has it in for you.  If that’s the case, just set your AdWords maximum per-day rate at a low value.  A $1 a day cap will mean that the worst pocket-book damage your determined arch-nemesis could inflict would be manageably paltry.

Lastly, just in case this needs to be said, don’t put electrical heating elements on your head without the help of a properly licensed and bonded professional.  Or at all.

Thanks to Seth Finkelstein of the well written Infothought blog for bringing some of this to my attention.