I heard something over the weekend that I thought I'd pass along.  I overheard a lady telling a group of people:

"If you feel bad about dogs", go to goodsearch.com, register for a dog charity, and do a few searches.  When the search results show up, click on a few ads for them.

In case you're not familiar with it, GoodSearch is a Yahoo-based search engine that encourages people to sign up schools and charities, and then do searches on the site to generate advertising revenue.  GoodSearch shares 50% of that revenue with the charity people sign up to help out.  And, as they point out, it's a "free" way for people to donate to causes they feel strongly about:

… the whole point of GoodSearch [is] using this search engine — and thereby generating money for your favorite cause — is free. We know that most people, like us, would love to be able to give limitless amounts of money to every charity they support, but of course cannot. Some have given all they can for now; others have the desire to help, but no funds. GoodSearch now provides all Internet users with an easy way to donate to their favorite charities without ever having to tap into their own finances.

In theory, it's a decent idea.  But if people are using the service like the lady I overheard, it's a gross manipulation of the system.  Those finances that people aren't tapping into may not be theirs…but they're someones.  And I know that GoodSearch's intentions are… well… good.  They can't control the way people talk about their service.

But should something like this ever take off, it would probably start raising more than a few eyebrows. How is this a good thing for advertisers?  I'll let you decide if you would want to pay for this kind of traffic.