Take a look at this screen capture from my recent visit to Google. I was looking for information on how to mod an ATX power supply to work with a Blue and White Power Macintosh G3. I found some good intel—turns out you can use an ATX PSU if you snip a single wire before installing—but what really caught my eye were the pay-per-click ads, or “Sponsored Links”, running down the right side of the page.

Now, as an employee of a company that uses just this form of advertisement, both on Google and via the search engines pimped by Overture, I have no basic problem with click-through advertising. It’s fairly unobtrusive, and believe me, it works, at least for us. But I had not previously noticed that any given company’s zeal for clicks—and their concomitant mis- or overuse of key terms—can produce some really funny-looking sponsored links:

ATX Power Supply Cheap

At DV Warehouse you’ll find a full range of all Mac model Power Supply.

And of course, my personal favorite:

PC Power Supply ATX. Find great price for computer power supply.

These links read like stereotypical Middle- or Far Eastern hucksters in the “Bazaar Scene” of some bad direct-to-video adventure film. “You like? Power Supply ATX you like, eh? You buy, you buy!”

I wasn’t sure I could take any of these companies seriously after this revelation, so as a courtesy I did not cost them any money by clicking on their ads. 😉