I noticed on my websites today that there is an ad for Amazon.com. My first thought was that this would be very difficult and I would take my hat off to anyone who could outrank Amazon. My second thought was to look at how well he was doing - but then I remembered that searches for domain names don't work! I guess he/she knows what he's doing - I have certainly used the network for expirements that were practically impossible before I joined.
1) it could be a referral thing 2) if it's not, he's targetting people that plug in "amazon" into google (plenty of people do), not "amazon.com" (which will only have 1 result) if he's going for the second... eh, pick something more lucrative amazon's payout isn't great by any means.
The link is to his own site with the link text "Amazon.Com". I was just wondering whether this was something clever that I had missed - I try to assume people know what they're doing until proven otherwise.
I've seen quite a few anchor texts that I couldn't believe people would even think others search for. The whole ebay thing for Shawn is a bit different since he has the most weight in the network, and is a rare case.
For me it was the fact that a search for amazon.com takes you to the amazon.com website that was confusing (the ad text is not amazon but is amazon.com). As you rightly say Shawn is well on the way to demonstrating that it may be possible to outrank a major player for their company name but you can't win if your target is the domain name.