For a Fee, Wind Up Atop the Search Heap
By BOB TEDESCHI

Published: January 22, 2004

GOOGLE vanity is getting to be costly.

As Internet users seek to differentiate themselves from people who share their names, some are buying their way to prominence on Google, Yahoo and other search engines. The added exposure comes courtesy of keyword advertising, in which marketers - or common folk, for that matter - bid to have brief advertisements appear atop or beside search results whenever Internet users type in certain words.

Most commonly, that means users who type the phrase "airline tickets" into a search box on Google or Yahoo will see a prominent text ad for Expedia or Travelocity, for which those companies bid more than 75 cents per click last week on Yahoo (Google does not disclose bid prices). But increasingly, it means people will also find an "ad" for Mark Pincus, for instance, whenever they type in his name into Google.

Mr. Pincus, a San Francisco-based technology entrepreneur who most recently founded a networking site, www.tribe.net, bought his own name on Google in 2002, he said, because he thought people would have trouble finding him after a job move.

"I'd been chairman of a company called Support Soft, so if people wanted to find my bio, they could Google me and find me that way," Mr. Pincus said. "But when I stepped down, that was gone, so in a sense my Internet history had been wiped out."

"I knew that when people Googled me, what came up was a lot of random stuff, and I wanted to control what was found about me," he said. "And O.K., I also loved to see how many times I got Googled in a week."

When Internet users type Mr. Pincus's name into Google these days, they are greeted by a tinted ad with a link to his biographical page, atop a page of other Mark Pincus-related links. The ad, when clicked, yields a résumé and links to Mr. Pincus's personal Web log, or blog, and the blog of the extended Pincus family. He pays the Google minimum, a nickel per click, for the ad - and 25 percent of those searching for his name click on the link.