Search Engines Take Their Time Disclosing Paid Links

An anonymous reader says "This CNN.com article talks about how most search engines have not disclosed the difference between a paid ad and an 'objective' result. The one exception of course is every geek's favorite search engine, Google. Once again, hooray for Google!" We mentioned the FTCs Mandate that search engines be clear about who's paying for what. Apparently all the non-google engines are on vacation ;)

Comments

Teoma also distinguishes between paid/not paid

[allelopath]

Teoma also distinguishes between paid/not paid

Credibility

[TibbonZero]

I think that search engines really get users on credibility.
I know that with Google, I won't get popups, not too many banners, no porn ads.
More importantly, getting what you search for is important. I know with google, I can find anything almost, and their Cache and Translate features really help out. I know with confidence that Google will give me the results I want.

So, why are these other Engines killing their credibility by jumping on this bandwagon, and not telling the users what they are getting? Less people will use it, and the service will die.

In addition: Check out this.. It's google's beta of their answer service. Ask a question, and Pay for the answer. Kinda cool if you have a complex or hard to find problem.

Re:Credibility

[nyquist_theorem]

In addition: Check out this. [google.com]. It's google's beta of their answer service. Ask a question, and Pay for the answer. Kinda cool if you have a complex or hard to find problem.

Am I the only one that's rather impressed by this? The quality and depth of some of the answers provided to some pretty straightforward or simple questions is remarkable.

EG, for $20, you can ask "abc television had a story on a lady in cambodia who set up a orphinage and her relationship with a cambodian pilot" and get this. Or, for two bucks, you can ask why your site isn't listed on google and they'll tell you. Lastly, if you're wondering how to help American businesses expand into Romania, for $30 you can find out.

The best part is that they even give you the search terms they used on google, as well as any other resources they used. For those of us that have been using search engines since Altavista was good, feeding a search engine a balanced diet is pretty straight forward - but if you've seen someone new to the net try to work a search engine, you can understand how useful this is - the whole "teach a man to fish" bit, I suppose.

Wow.

Re:Credibility

[Broccolist]

Google answers was a nice idea, but it's a failure. There have been only 4000 questions since the project started a month ago -- even though for some time it was advertised on every google search result! At an average of (say) 5$ a question, that equates to 20,000$ of total cash transactions, only a fraction of that being revenue for Google. The buying market is obviously too small for this to work. If they have an ounce of business sense, they'll drop the thing soon.

Lots of similar services have popped up in the past, and they all failed. The problem is that although you have plenty of sellers with too much time on their hands and looking for a cheap ego-boost, there are very few people willing to dish out any money to random people for information they could just as well find themselves.

silly

[tps12]

This whole "debate" ignores a basic truth about the web. Put simply, there is a whole lot of cr*p out there.

A few companies have put great, useful sites together (Amazon comes to mind...note they're one of the few sites to turn a profit...coincidence?). But for every gem you will find hundreds of ugly, useless pages designed by high school kids between games of Quake and rounds of marijuana smoking.

When I'm searching for something, one of the best ways to seperate the cream from the crop, as it were, is using a simple rule of thumb: if a site's owner is not willing to invest a few dollars to get it listed in the major search engines, then he has probably not put in enough effort to the site as a whole, and I shouldn't bother.

For this reason, I love Google. I always ignore the general results and go straight to the sponsors, who by definition have some confidence in their own worth. If a search engine were created that only listed paid advertisers, then it would replace Google, not only for myself, but for most sensible web users.

In short, this is nothing to get upset about. Search providers that list advertisers in their top search results are doing their users a favor, and should be celebrated with open arms.

A search engine by any other name...

[Anonymous Custard]

Is it fair to call yourself a search engine if you're really just an Ad database? What if a company offers their site as a search engine, but actually only retrieves relevant Advertisement-links frmo their own paid sponsor database, and never searches the rest of the web?

I think we need an official definition of 'Search Engine.' Just like a product can't be certified as "100% Grade-A Beef" without meeting some set standards of ingredients and production process, a 'search engine' should have to meet certain standards as well. Isn't it false advertising if they say they search the web but really search their own Ad databases?

For now, it'd be useful if each search engine had an About page which describes the type of search they do; be it a monthly crawl, a live search of popular sites or info services, free and paid submitted links, etc, or any combination.

The only question that should be debated in congress is where the responsibility lies for user-education, sort of a consumer responsibilty clause or free speech thing. Should the sites tell you, or should you figure it out yourself?

Perhaps the reverse is also true

[SmallFurryCreature]

Wouldn't it be even more worrying if the reverse happened. If a search engine was paid to NOT display certain links? The internet is supposed to be this free haven of information, but the only way to find anything is through someone elses search engine, most of wich apparantly for money are willing to be selective in their searches.

Just how much would bill pay to have a links to bug tracking lists sorted at the bottom?

Has anyone else noticed this Google problem?

[Outland Traveller]

In the last few weeks I've noticed a disturbing trend when using google. I'll search for something using keywords, and the page that google spits back is 50% full of links to third-tier sites that read "Advance search for [your keywords]". If you go to those pages they are full of ads and do not have the information you're looking for. It looks like someone found an unfortunately effective way to poison google's results.

Re:Has anyone else noticed this Google problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a thread on usenet about this issue.

The current hypothesis is that the search44 guys have a lot of domains, and a lot of pages with different keywords.

Re:It's only a recommendation

[Kierthos]

I am reminded of a Dudley Moore movie called "Crazy People", where Moore's character was sent to an insane asylum for suggesting that advertising use the truth....

Such gems as "Volvo: We're boxy but we're safe." and "Don't go to France, the French are rude. Come to Jamaica, we're nicer."

Of course, I am also reminded of the time I ordered food at Denny's and asked for the burger that looked just like the one on the menu. The waitress laughed.

Kierthos