I Didn't know Search keywords can just be "Bought"...

HP has claimed to have "bought" 10's of thousands...

[yycowns]

New excerpt from Adage.com: WHY HP HAS PURCHASED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SEARCH TERMS.

Is this some Editorial error or what is HP actually claiming here?

[hannamyluv]

adwords (Google) and overture(Yahoo). There are forums here dedicated to both.

You don't really buy search terms, you bid for placement on them. People just refer to it as buying search terms because its faster to say. ;)

Tens of thousands is not unreasonable. The company I work for is middle sized and probably advertises on about 5K. A company of HPs size could well afford 100X that.

[yycowns]

Yes, I know that. :)

So I am asking myself "#*$! are these ppl talking about buying keywords up?"

I mean, I could simply "Buy it back" from them with higher bids... ;)

Editorial error I suppose, but I assumed the AdAge ppl were more SEM savvy than this...