Overture referalls but unpaid?

is this possible or something fishy?

[Mark_A]

See some overture referalls in a site I run never submitted to them.

Is it possible overture is adding sites for free?

Or has someone else paid for some ppc ads for that site?

If second "thanks" to whoever has the extra space in their wallet but don't come to me looking for a refund as refusals often offend :-)

[bodine]

How well do you rank in Inktomi for those terms? Goverture uses them for backfill.

[The Contractor]

Bodine is absolutely correct. I get quite a few referrals from Overture in my logs - they are actually backfilling with Ink listings.

[Mark_A]

Hi Bodine & Contractor, position 2 for the one term I checked, which amazed me and is why I wondered if there was anything fishy going on.

Haven't yet checked any other sites / terms.
Why would they be doing that if they dont get paid for it?

Backfilling does not seem compatible with being a ppc engine especially if free sites casn rank better than paid.

No evidence that this one did, perhaps that term has no bidders, but then again if it did would overture want to be paying a share to its partners as a loss leader?

[Shakil]

Mark,

A lot of results from a PPC engine will maybe only have 4-5 bidders, however in the interest of customer satisfaction, the Engine has to show more results, hence using Inktomi for the rest of the results.

We find quite often that a user has clicked on a result for us via Overture at position 25, even though we may be Number 1-2 via PPC.

Shak

[Mark_A]

thanks Shakil, we live and learn eh :-)