Pay Per Post: Google Uses Every Trick To Beat Yahoo In Japan - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
From the page: "the Japanese blogosphere...is filled with reports about Google hiring Cyberbuzz, a Tokyo-based Internet marketing company to promote the keyword feature (its widget version) with a pay-per-post campaign. And in fact, the search string Google Hot Keywords Ranking+Blog Widget+CyberBuzz in Japanese in Google's own Blog Search leads to a few dozen results, indicating the reports aren't made up of thin air. This blogger, for example, integrated the keyword widget and praises the list as being very useful to be kept up-to-date on what is going on in the world. This one says the keywords change every 20 minutes and that the new Google feature once quickly helped in obtaining information on a Japanese TV star. All postings end with a disclosure that says: I am taking part in the Cyberbuzz campaign." - Ontario Emperor