I don’t know how to explain them except - search on something very specific, say “Marsha Bobworth Class of 1979 Springfield High”, and you get a ton of hits that read like:
“Information about Marsha Bobworth Class of 1979 Springfield High”
“Order Marsha Bobworth Class of 1979 Springfield High”
“Recipes for Marsha Bobworth Class of 1979 Springfield High”
“Related terms for Marsha Bobworth Class of 1979 Springfield High”
“Visit our sponsors for best prices on Marsha Bobworth Class of 1979 Springfield High”.
Dammit, how false! How misleading! I think I’ve found something useful but it turns out to be this autogenerated crap.
I click and I click, but there’s really no place to order a Marsha Bobworth Class of 1979 Springfield High.
You very likely have “CoolWebSearch” spyware on your computer. There’s a sticky at the top of the General Questions forum that advises on how to get rid of this stuff - CWShredder is the specific tool for removing this particular piece of spyware. It is indeed a pain in the ass, but it can be fixed.
Assuming your search terms were “Fallujah”, “Phuket”, and “Bin Laden”, I just did Google searches on all three, and didn’t get any of those as sponsored links. I got fairly normal ones:
Thailand last-minute
Thailand hotels special promotions
and last-minute reservations online www.res24.com
Army exposed to radiation
Dust in Fallujah from depleted
Uranium can cause birth defects
Honor Your Soldier
Free Tribute for Your Soldier
Anyone can add Pic’s and Testimony www.SoldierTributes.com [the bin Laden search]
I refreshed several times until it started cycling through the same ads again.
My point is, I wonder if CWS also affects sponsored links?
A bit more investigation, and I think I can explain the ‘flights’ result - I suspect the companies have taken a worldwide list of airports, and used it wholesale as the source of their sponsored keywords. I get similar links if I search the name of my local ex-airport (which closed a decade ago but is still listed everywhere). The companies don’t stand to lose anything from doing this, because they only pay when somebody clicks on the link. And they’re UK sites, so I suspect Google is only providing the links to UK-based browsers.
Ya never know… Well, I suppose you do, actually, but still.