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

It's only a recommendation

[Telecommando]

It's not like they're required by law to do it.

Yet.

Re:It's only a recommendation

[Anonvmous Coward]

I'm very close to advertising. I've watched some of the decision making. It's not ethical.

Ever see a picture of strawberries? Chances are, that strawberry is covered in lipstick to make it an appealing shade of red. Everybody knows that McDonald's burgers look nothing like their picture. Car commercials feature locations that nobody'd ever take the car too. Heck, one showed a Jeep outrun a helicopter up a mountain. Ads, as a general business, are deceptive. Ever see that popup that looks like a message box saying 'you have 1 new message'? Heh.

If advertising was ethical, products wouldn't be held in such a ludicrously high light. They take whatever means are necessary to get people to come visit, with no regard to whether or not they're being deceptive. This is why search engines must disclose paid links.

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.

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.