Adwords

Adwords is a PPC service provided by Google. If you carry out almost any search on Google, you will find boxes to the right hand side of the normal search results, containing short text adverts for websites. These are the Adwords. Occasionally, some are "promoted" to appear as full advertisments across the top of the results. They are alway labeled as sponsored results.

Google's Adwords are also syndicated across sites that earn a fee in return for displaying them.

Google's Adwords system is unique among PPC providers in that there is no guarantee that the highest bidder will appear top (although higher bids certainly help). Google's system also takes into account the click-through rate of each Adword, thereby ensuring that those Adwords which are more popular (and therefore likely to be more helpful to users) are more likely to appear near the top.