Ads appear on Wolfram Alpha

Now that Wolfram Alpha is up and running, the next question is whether it can make any money.

Wolfram Research appears to have sold the first ad on the search engine to Lenovo, as noted by Search Engine Land. An ad for the ThinkPad appeared recently next to a Wolfram Alpha search for "pi," the mathematical constant.

It's not clear how advertising works on Wolfram Alpha but it does not appear that Wolfram has duplicated Google's keyword-based search ad approach as yet. The site has said it will accept corporate sponsorship, however. Lenovo's ad was a text ad for the ThinkPad that turned into a display ad when a visitor moused over the text.