Think of this every time you search

Many people often have wondered how much money does it cost to google every time we perform a search. The Search that google will get everything perfect to respond instantly to produce 100 results, to search multiple times while you write the search etc etc... Even though we understand that the resources involved have to be significant we also understand that the cost of a web page request - even at an expensive site - it is small enough that you would need to batch a 1000 requests to really talk about meaningful numbers.

Starting from that point I asked my self the question
 - How much money does google earn every time I search.
   My first instinctive answer would have been :
       Nothing really - given that I never really click on ads ... but if you have millions searching... that quicky adds up

Which is completely wrong:
Google really charges per impression - not per clicks : given that the clickthoughrate of the ads are carefully regulated - and advertisers are penalized if the CTR is below 0.5-1%... we can make the approximation that average impression nets to Google about 1% of the average click.
What is the avg CPC?  I would definitely put it at $1  for US geos... which means that Google makes about 1cent per ad impression

Quick reality check
 - googling average ctr on google => 3%

 - googling average cpc on google => $0.35

ie cpc was 1/3rd of what I thought but ctr is 3x of what I thought - their multiple is exactly what I thought (smiling)

.

Ok So google makes 1cent per search of mine? No. Google makes 1cent for each ad that is impressed on my search results. How many ads are there on my results?3 at the top - 7-8 on the side and recently there are more in the bottom. Plus I will get more ads displayed as I am writing my query - and the page reflects results+ads on demand... So lots of ads.

If the avg # of ads is 10... then google makes 10cents every time I do a search - no matter whether I click or not!!!!

Unreal!

Cool node projects

Three related interesting projects - they open the potential for crowd-expanded education…in the form of multiple people adding problems/exercises that others can do/verify/learn
  1. https://github.com/maxogden/art-of-node
  2. https://github.com/rvagg/learnyounode
  3. https://github.com/rvagg/workshopper

They also make use of some new widgets I have not seen

Talking about widgets I also liked the license widget seen by substack at stream-handbook

My first HN post - Sunday Assembly

I did it rather impulsively - no preparation. It has  been falling like a rock since I posted it :-(

I really liked the idea of the "Sunday Assembly" when I heard about it on NPR on the way home yesterday. I liked their moto too "You can talk about Good without talking about God"
They seem to be running a crowdfunding campaign - which was not very successful 33K british pounds instead of 500K  (ends tomorrow..)
My hope was that a bit of HN publicity can go long ways in helping them get some funding...