Search Engines–Advertising
Source: AP
“FTC: Disclose Paid Search Listings”
From the article, “Internet search engines that take money from Web sites in exchange for prominent placement should make that practice clearer to Web users, federal regulators said Friday. Many search engine Web sites, including AltaVista, LookSmart and AOL Search, give preferred placement to paid advertisers. The Federal Trade Commission said that prime space can confuse Web users who are looking for the best response to their search, rather than ads for sites that paid up front. The commission’s decision came in response to a complaint from consumer advocacy group Commercial Alert, which is backed by activist Ralph Nader” The complaint itself was orginally filed with the FTC about a year ago. You can read more about it in this 7/17/2001 article by Danny Sullivan. In my opinion, all web search instruction should include at least a brief mention of advertising on the engines and how to identify it.
See Also: Read the Full-Text of the FTC Response to the Commerical Alert Complaint

This entry was posted on Friday, June 28th, 2002 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.