patio11, I think I've been down this road with you before (I think years ago, amazing how long I've been on this site): I don't think the majority of Google's

patio11, I think I've been down this road with you before (I think years ago, amazing how long I've been on this site): I don't think the majority of Google's revenue come from online transactions. Most come from services where each individual customer is worth more. The keywords with the highest clickrates are often things like 'plumber,' 'removals,' 'mortgage broker 'or 'divorce lawyer,' yellow pages type of material. An online shop (for example) might make an average sale of $50 with a $20 margin & a 2% conversion rate (fairly generous numbers). They can spend $0.40 on clicks and break even. An migration agent will probably get 20% conversion rate (to phone calls) & 1/3 of those will become jobs (7%). A client is worth about $1k. If they are willing to spend 10-20% on acquisition, that means they can (and do) spend $10 if necessary. So, I wouldn't be surprised if Google sees this as: GDP of a nation * x percentage of revenue reinvested in customer acquisition * x percentage of customer acquisition done on Google.