In the summer of 2006, however, Google pulled the rug out from under him. Suddenly and without warning, Google raised Sourcetool’s minimum bid requirement from 5 or 6 cents to $1, and in some cases to as much as $5 or $10. Mr. Savage discovered this was happening only after he saw that Sourcetool’s traffic had dwindled drastically and began looking into the reasons. Because the new Google-mandated minimum bid was so much higher than the maximum he allowed for (usually around 10 cents), Sourcetool’s ads had disappeared from the Google search results page. That’s why his traffic had dropped off.