loanuniverse - 7:33 pm on Nov 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

I would think that this would be more of a problem for the Adwords shown on the Google site or one of the premier search partners that it would be for us adsense publishers.

From the point of view of a competing advertiser, it is much easier to target the keywords of search phrases that your competition uses than finding sites that also show those ads. In addition, most publishers would note a spike in CTR and impressions caused by a bot, while it might take longer if you are serving 200 million search results a day.

Publishers going after publishers is also a possibility, but unless you have upset someone really bad, what is the incentive?

Publishers using them to increase their revenue is possible, but they risk killing the goose that laid the golden egg, and the one day that they get too greedy they will be caught. Not saying that there won't be some that won't get away with it, I am saying that there will be few.

Frankly, I don't think anyone is going to go after my {average 20th position} on my adwords campaign, and if they do it won't matter since my budget is like $3.00 a day. Therefore, I don't worry too much about it.