Search Engines and Paid inclusion"
- Clear and conspicuous disclosure" of paid placement
In 2002 the FTC issued a letter calling on the entire search engine
industry to provide "clear and conspicuous disclosure" of paid
placement and paid inclusion, the two primary methods of
incorporating advertising into search results (also see an
previous posting in the linking cases section).
Paid-inclusion results simply show up in the ordinary results.
Typically, users have no clue that their presence might owe more to
cash payments than to the complex algorithms of a search engine. In November 2004
Consumer WebWatch,
a consumer advocacy group,
issued the study,
"Searching for Disclosure," which evaluated the compliance of 15
major search engines with the FTC's guidelines.
Some Key findings:
Paid
inclusion was not satisfactorily disclosed or explained by any
of the search engines tested.
Meta-engines,
which present results from several search engines
simultaneously, repeatedly failed to adequately disclose the
presence of paid placement and paid inclusion within search
results.
Disclosures are generally hard to find, accessible by headings
and hyperlinks that often blend in with the page, making them
easy for consumers to overlook.
Information disclosed by the sites on business practices with
advertisers - and how these practices may affect search results
- was often confusing and jargon-laden.
So, search engines should make
their disclosures of paid listings more visible and clear in the
future.
