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FTC Demands Search Engines Separate Paid Advertisements From Search Results
An anonymous reader notes that the FTC has sent letters to search engine companies (PDF) telling them to make sure advertisements are clearly distinguishable from search results.
"According to both the FTC staff's original search engine guidance and the updated guidance, failing to clearly and prominently distinguish advertising from natural search results could be a deceptive practice. The updated guidance emphasizes the need for visual cues, labels, or other techniques to effectively distinguish advertisements, in order to avoid misleading consumers, and it makes recommendations for ensuring that disclosures commonly used to identify advertising are noticeable and understandable to consumers. The letters note that the principles of the original guidance still apply, even as search and the business of search continue to evolve. The letters observe that social media, mobile apps, voice assistants on mobile devices, and specialized search results that are integrated into general search results offer consumers new ways of getting information. The guidance advises that regardless of the precise form that search takes now or in the future, paid search results and other forms of advertising should be clearly distinguishable from natural search results."
Regulating advertising is a function of the FTC.
Just because you are not paying is no reason why advertising should be represented as anything else.
You mean setting the advertisement background color to #fefefe instead of #ffffff isn't good enough for the Feds?
By showing ads. That does not mean they are allowed to lie about results.
The last thing I want is advertising I cannot distinguish from real results.
Why is thre a need to do this.. What does it matter?
Deception. The FTC is saying you can't make a paid-for ad look like a legitimate search result, because it's deceptive and unfair to both the consumer and other legitimate businesses who don't have the resources to pay Google boo-koo bucks for prime ad space. Not saying it's right or wrong, just pointing out the rationale.
As part of captialism if people get tired of getting the advertisements they will go to another search engine.
Ah, no, actually, that's a function of the free market, not capitalism in general, and as it should be abundantly clear at this point, there is not and never has been such a thing as a free market (that's not necessarily bad, BTW).
There is no reason for this.
Sure there is! It might not be a good one, or one you agree with, but there is a reason. There's always a reason.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Right. Google Shopping was originally a price comparison service. There was no charge for being listed. Then it was changed to an paid ad service. All the links on it changed to Google ad links. Our Ad Limiter browser add-on, which hides all but one Google ad per search result, then started limiting the number of shopping results displayed. We finally allowed more ads to show through on explicit Google shopping pages.
Now, Google Shopping results have changed again, so that they look like real search results. They even have additional Google ads, with the light tan background. But in reality, every result on a Google Shopping page is a paid ad.
Actually, it's EXACTLY what you said. Your argument is akin to "if people get tired of watching commercials, they'll just tune to TV stations that don't show commercials" -- in other words, complete bullshit.
I say make them use the BLINK tag.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Google and other ads are specifically designed to look like search results and exploit the fact that older people cannot see contrast of the background as well as younger people. Or even younger people using bad quality or badly calibrated monitors. (Or using Flux).
The contrast on the background is much lower than the federal 508 standard for contrast and I think has changed to over the years to a lighter shade as Google "optimizes" it.
http://i.imgur.com/Wmdd0.png
One is an ad and one is a search result, is there much difference? Given the average quality of monitors, I think those are designed to fool even otherwise sharp eyes.
There is a border on the right of the ads but none on at the bottom. Google must be getting tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue from the color change from blue to yellow, the ones shown in the example are about $50 to $100 for each click.
http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/
Guess they employ many behavioral psychologist super PHDs who tweaked the carefully and scientifically calibrated colors on ads and removed all contrast including borders to make many folks not realize where the ads end and the actual results begin. Forget about people going to paid websites and screwing websites that don't charge users that rank well organically because they're good and popular but don't give the Googolplex any money.
"Study:Contrast sensitivity gradually decreases with age"
http://www.eyeworld.org/article.php?sid=818&strict=0&morphologic=0
This space for rent.
Google and other ads are specifically designed to look like search results and exploit the fact that older people cannot see contrast of the background as well as younger people. Or even younger people using bad quality or badly calibrated monitors
I was reading their corporate motto "Do no evil" on their site, and then I saw your post and upped the contrast on my monitor and then saw the entire text that was hidden earlier, "Do no evil - except when it makes us money. In that case, be very very evil." !
You and the FTC must really be on to be something here!!!
This space for rent.
Google already does this... if you search for a product the first results you get are "Ads related to {Your Search Terms}" There are usually two or three online retailers followed by local retailers and google map showing those local retailers. Scroll past that and you get the actual search results and text ads on the right of each result page. Yahoo and Bing try to do the same thing {bing doesn't show a map} and duckduckgo has it's ads in a different color and they say "Sponsored Link" next to them.
{I don't actually use yahoo, bing, or duckduckgo but had to look and see how they were laid out}
Not sure how any other search engines are laid out but figure those are the four I hear the most about. I figure for public relations and to keep traffic the top search engines will do this anyway.
So there is no space between "no regulation" and "nanny state"? That's what you imply here, and that is how just about every regulation "debate" turns out these days.