google

[matt_r_baker]

how do google make their money?

[Scots-babe]

from the people paying them to make there sites come up

[stevie21]

and from selling advertising space

[Catso]

Scots-babe, if you mean taking money to put certain things at the top of the searches - no! They'd probably sue you for saying that. They go to extreme lengths not to do, nor allow that. Search engine optimisers are third-parties, employed by sites to battle against Google's efforts to make searches fair.

They do have lots of spin-off sidelines as well. EG Froogle, specialist searches, search hardware, an answerbank!

[Garamond]

I believe they're paid for every visit to their site from a Google page - those on the right hand side. In fact, some months ago there was some controversy concerning certain people clicking these links merely to get the parent firm to pay more.

[boink]

i would agree, the results on the right are "sponsored results" as are the first two at the top of the page

[Scots-babe]

well when we tried putting our site up the more we paid the closer to the top it got. Unless its changed or something since.