Search Engine Payola 186
QwkHyenA writes: "Seems that Ralph Nader and his Consumer Watchdog group has fired the first shot in pegging 8 search engines for reshuffling query results based on fees paid to them. Like we didn't see this happening! Nader has asked the FTC to look into this based on deceptive advertising practices..." Check out the complaint, which itself references pages like this one detailing how to pay for placement at all the major search engines.
Re:karma (Score:1)
- jim
- jim
essentially (Score:2)
You can't say "provides the best results to match your query", and then give you "whatever results we were paid to give you".
If you can find a search engine that says "search for the top sites on the web that paid us money", then that would be honest and nothing to complain about.
Re:goto and featured vs. sponsored (Score:1)
Actually, no, "featured" is not as clear as "sponsored". Everyone knows that sponsorship means paying money. Anyone whose IQ is at least 100 should be able to figure out that AltaVista is probably only featuring sites that pay money, but the dumber half of the population might be a little slower to catch on - and that's what Nader is trying to draw attention to.
--
Re:who cares? (Score:2)
Do you have any idea how many MILLIONS of people Microsoft has conned into "clicking the wrong button" that takes them to an MSN search page? Some versions of MSIE will redirect there any time a DNS lookup fails.
--
Three cheers for Google! (Score:1)
ttyl
Farrell
Simple. (Score:3)
Previous posters have brought up some poor analogies. Newspaper ads are clearly ads (and newspapers can get in serious trouble when this isn't the case). The yellow pages are entirely advertisement.
A better example is infomercials [ftc.gov]. These are clearly a `free service', too, as is all of broadcast television. That emphatically does not exempt them from the requirement to clearly distinguish paid ads from normal programming.
Now, you could argue about whether or not paid-for placement between `normal' links is the same as a tv commercial which is paid for in-between `normal' programming, but it's not a completely unreasonable stretch.
goto and featured vs. sponsored (Score:2)
It seems to me that Altavista's "featured sites" are just as clearly separated from the main results as Google's "sponsored links" -- or perhaps "featured" isn't as clear as "sponsored"?
Danny.
Re:whatever happened to democracy? (Score:1)
Re:Well, DUH (Score:2)
--
the telephone rings / problem between screen and chair / thoughts of homocide
Re:I think you should read the article anyway (Score:1)
--
Niklas Nordebo | niklas at nordebo.com
Re:Search engines need $ too.... (Score:1)
results aren't accurate but instead based on
payment without stating so, that's deceptive.
google.com is not one of the search engines
they're going after. in fact, the article
says:
"
Not all search engine companies have adopted deceptive advertising
practices. For example, Google clearly notes that its paid placements
are "Sponsored Links," and it will not put paid ads within its search
results. "We have no plans for a paid inclusion program," Google
spokesperson Cindy McCaffrey told SearchEngineWatch.com. "[O]ur search
results represent our editorial integrity, and we have no plans to
alter our automated process, which works very well in gathering
information and delivering highly relevant results,"(4) she said.
"
Re:IMAGINE (Score:1)
as long as you make a buck?
-Kevin
Re:So what's socialism, to you? (Score:1)
the US in the sense that they must operate under
the law. There are all sorts of restrictions
on what corporations can do legally. I think
this is a good thing for citizens and for
fair competition.
-Kevin
Re:Isn't this a capitalist society? (Score:1)
The FDA does more good than harm in my opinion.
Wherever there are people, there will be
corruption and bad decisions sometimes. This is
no different than private corporations. There are
no perfect systems. However, I do not believe
that corporations will do what's in the best
issue of the people without intervention and
regulation - for example pollution.
A private company in my hometown dumped chemical
waste into the town river for years.
The Bells, IBM, Standard Oil, and Microsoft have
all had actions against them for antitrust
activity.
Just becase there have been bad cops
doesn't mean we should get rid of law enforcement.
-Kevin
Re:Isn't this a capitalist society? (Score:2)
sense you describe. The government must
intervene to keep order and enforce ethical
behavior.
What if pharmaceutical companies made fradulent
claims about their drug products? Is that
okay as long as we have the almighty "free market"? You seem to be suggesting that
it is better to have a "free market" than to
enforce ethical behavior.
Gee, I'm sorry your mom died but she shouldn't
have been so stupid and believed those pills
would actually lower her blood pressure.
I don't know how it got into your head that
honesty and decency is outweighed by profit,
but I find it very sad.
Companies are unable to ethically self-regulate
and this is why we need the FDA and other
oversight organizations, as well as pro-consumer
groups.
-Kevin
So what's socialism, to you? (Score:3)
The point I'm trying to make is that whether or not you care, yourself, is exactly as interesting - to you - as it is to others to have opinions of their own. Whether or not you personally mind using search engines where the content returned might have more to do with financial transactions that you remain ignorant of, or the fact that they exist at all, doesn't make it a poor story.
Running a search engine certainly isn't free, but if you want to make up for that by changing what a search engine IS, or at least what it is commonly (and perhaps naively) perceived to be, without telling anyone about it, then that most certainly is deceptive advertising.
The right of search engines to charge money for returning their result isn't in question, it's how they do it that is the issue. When you ask your teacher at school how to solve a particular problem, you expect him to answer to the best of his ability, not according to what he's paid to say, right? And if what he tells you is influenced by some form of remuneration, whether it's secret or not, wouldn't you prefer to be told about it?
It's all about playing an open game. It's what MSNBC do whenever they mention Microsoft and add a comment to the effect that MSNBC is a joint venture held by, among others, Microsoft. It's about confessing to a prejudice when you're asked for an opinion. If you don't reveal whatever motivation that might slant what you say, then you must accept that people who discover this motivation later could come to see what you said, and perhaps you yourself, in a new light.
We all agree that telling something that isn't the truth is deceptive, but to not tell something which is true seems to be more of a gray area.
We already saw this (Score:4)
Garth Algar: Here, take two of these.
Wayne Campbell: Ahh, Nuprin. Little, yellow, different.
Re:the crucial difference wrt google (Score:1)
The personal version (MyAltaVista? I forget.) was briefly available for pay-no-money free. AltaVista cancelled it because it brought in no money and maintaining it was expensive - or so I was told for a friend who used to have a job maintaining it.
the crucial difference wrt google (Score:3)
Imagine the absurdity: let's say you're some R&D manager covering a few groups and you want to index your intranet (which has documentation and interface descriptions for all internal-use and skunkworks projects, as well as docs for local tools and local mods to tools). What's the first thought that comes to your mind? I can bet my ass it's not "Eureka! I'll license the engine from www.dogpile.com! Failing that, I'll go for askjeeves.com or some other shill-engine!" Nope. Pay-for-rank and pay-for-inclusion have merely castrated the already-ineffectual engines backing the "web portal" sites. Even if they had any cred before they ran out of VC, they CERTAINLY don't now.
[1] IIRC, Altavista once sold "personal AltaVista" and "workgroup Altavista" products, but I believe they were unsuccessful and are no longer available -- I think they were discontinued shortly before AV went to pay-to-improve-rank as a business model. Mea culpa if I'm wrong.
who cares? (Score:4)
Maybe AltaVista was worthwhile three or four years ago. Maybe five people have ever used Netscape or MSN search on purpose, but those are things one accidentally uses by clicking the wrong button in her browser. However, none of these companies has a real business strategy -- if they weren't selling placement, they'd be selling your personal data to x10.com. Selling placement is merely the third or fourth step on the road to fuckedcompany.com.
Re:who cares? (Score:1)
All that is per my bosses words and a load of shit. When people stop using terrible search engines the companies will stop throwing their advertising dollars at search engines. I don't know how to make Google.com money, but a little ad on the side is OK by me.
On a side note, If you look at the article, most everyone is linked with GoTo.com...
(If you link to GoTo.com on your site, you can start out by making 2 cents a search (Paid by linkExchange)... and when you get enough searches you get roughly 6 cents a search (Paid by GoTo.com directly from the money the advertisers paid.). This of course is all from my bosses mouth and will get me fired... Of course I hate the job anyway so It's OK
Re:You're wrong. (Score:1)
Hi Zico, long time no see. Been on vacation?
You can also do this in Netscape by clicking on the Netscape Search button, selecting a search engine and clicking "always use this search engine". Then you can just type "? search terms" in the URL box to fire off a Google (or whatever) search.
The shortcuts to various search forms are a neat idea, though. I ended up just sticking the appropriate search boxes on my startup page, but your setup sounds pretty good too.
You're wrong. (Score:2)
Uh, maybe because it's not a crap engine? Anybody who says they only use Google is instantly flagging themselves as someone who doesn't know dick about web searching, because Google has some big holes in it. It munges stop words within phrases, it can't do stemming (to Google, a "rocket" has no relationship to "rockets"), no wildcard support, and no "or" support come to mind. Try using a metasearch engine like ixquick sometime and you'll see all the stuff that Google misses.
On the topic of searching, anybody who uses IE 5 or above (read: most of Slashdot) who does a lot of searching should check grab the IE Web Accessories [microsoft.com] (they work for IE6, too) and make use of the Quick Search feature. Instead of going to Google and then searching for "Hungry Hippos", just type in your URL box or Open dialog 'gg "Hungry Hippos"' (without the single quotes), and it'll shoot you to the appropriate results page. Results no good and you want to check AltaVista? Just enter 'av "Hungry Hippos"' and there you are.
It comes with a bunch of sites already programmed (AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, InfoSeek, InfoSeek Ultra, Lycos, MetaCrawler, Magellan, OpenText, WebCrawler, and Yahoo), and you can add your own. Plus you can basically use it for any web query that's looking for a single field — you just stick in %s where the term(s) you're searching for should go. So, in addition to the search engines that I've added (Google, Northern Light, ixquick, and Raging Search), I've also set it to access UPS tracking, the W3C's CSS validator, MSN Dictionary, Google Groups, Netcraft, and the W3C's HTML validator. So, instead of going to Netcraft and entering a site in the textbox, I just do a "nc www.apple.com" and the web server that Apple's using is the next thing I see. ("nc" being my alias for Netcraft).
You can make your own, but just to get you started, here's my own list of custom queries:
css - http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=% s&warning=1&profile=css2s f e=off&site=groupse b&cmd=process_search&query=%s% s&orl== %sn e
di - http://dictionary.msn.com/find/entry.asp?search=%
dj - http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%s&hl=en&lr=&sa
gg - http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
ix - http://ixquick.com/do/metasearch.pl?cat=web&cat=w
nc - http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=%s
nl - http://www.northernlight.com/nlquery.fcg?cb=0&qr=
rs - http://ragingsearch.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?q
val - http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=%s&doctype=Inli
(Hope I didn't mess up the cut-and-paste job — it comes from an email I wrote to some fellow workers lately — and I know this turned into a long post, but this feature really is a great time saver. It's one of those things where you get annoyed whenever you have to use somebody else's computer and they don't have it installed. So, just thought I'd point it out to anyone who might not have tried it before. Oh, and it looks like Slashdot's entering extra spaces into the URLs, so if you want to copy them, make sure to remove the spaces.)
Cheers,
Re:Isn't this a capitalist society? (Score:2)
Um, no, its much worse than that.
If you are allergic to walnuts and buy a food because it says "no walnuts", but it does, and you die, you have a bigger problem than simply "oops, just don't shop there again".
When a hospital buys supplies, it expects that syringes and gauze labelled "sterile" are, in fact sterile according to the legal requirements of that word. If we can label anything "sterile" we like, a lot of folks are going to die of infections before we "punish" the vendor by taking our business elsewhere.
That "punishment" doesn't seem very useful, seeing as how they just killed a lot of people by lying and now they get to sell their same product for the same purpose to other hospitals (probably under a different company name).
---------------------------------------------
Re:Isn't this a capitalist society? (Score:2)
That's okay, we're a non-capitalist country (and definitely a non-laissez-faire country).
We're also not a democracy.
We have found that setting up any system at the extreme end of a scale tends to be counter-productive.
Have an economy with some regulations, minimal requirements for disclosure, and significant financial oversight, and the rest of it can be pretty free-going.
besides the fact that there is not necessarily lying taking place here
Of course. That's what "investigation" means. They want to find out if there is or isn't.
---------------------------------------------
Re:Isn't this a capitalist society? (Score:4)
One of the fundamental tenets of capitalism is that the free market only works efficiently with accurate information.
Misrepresenting (also called "lying" by normal people) your product or business in order to decieve the public is not a right of a company (at least in our country).
Whether the search engines are misrepresenting themselves and services is what Nader is asking to investigate.
"We can say what we want to sell our stuff, and by the way did I mention this cures cancer?" is not a particularly compelling argument.
---------------------------------------------
Re:Isn't this a capitalist society? (Score:2)
I guess... (Score:4)
--
Re:I read it, and Nader is still way off (Score:1)
Wait, I thought you were talking about Nader, not the people behind the deceptive advertising.
Re:Read the article. Dismissed your post. (Score:1)
Many people believe that the purpose of a company is to make money. Actually this is not correct.
When I took Business Administration in college, one point that got hammered home in first year was that the function of business was to serve the market segment's needs and/or wants. If you can do that at a price that the market is willing to pay and that allows you to make a profit, then the business will succeed/survive.
Saying that the purpose of a business is to make money is like saying that the purpose of humans is to produce carbon dioxide. Making money is a necessity of a company's continued existence, it is not the reason that it exists.
And yes, I do believe that it is the proper function of government to protect its citizens from predatory business practices. A search engine that promises to give objective reports and then shoves in advertisements instead is lying to me. I don't mind the ads if they are labelled as ads. (This is no different from existing print standards.)
yeah, and......? (Score:1)
Re:How flimsy is this? (Score:1)
The complaint here is the equivelant of taking an unimportand article about a company and bumping it up to the front page because the company paid to be noticed, and taking the real important news and burying it back on page 6.
The purpose of newspapers is to present news, in order of importance and relevance. The purpose of serch engines is to mine a pool of web site information against search criteria, and return results ordered by some clear criteria, usually relevance...
Not, the search engines may not do a great job of meeting their criteria, just like the newspapers don't always do, but there's a presumption of an honest effort, free of bias. Paying them to bypass their own judgement to reorder the data portrayed, contrary to their advertised purpose or methodology, is misleading illegal.
Yes, it's that simple.
Re:I guess... (Score:1)
---
Re:Who uses anything but Google? (Score:1)
Well, if the free-market is so great, why the hell is a crap engine like MSN getting 6 times the searches as Google?
Same reason the lemmings are all using Windows 9x and not OS/2. Marketing, hype and FUD.
People don't go to what's best, they go to what corporations lead them to because it makes them money.
Beta, VHS etc. etc. Everyone says, stop crying that the better stuff lost, it couldn't survive in the marketplace. As if this was the objective. Product development is all about LCD. Joe Sixpack rules and since he don't spell so good and he don't think so good, our products damn well better not be too good. We might alienate him.
You should look realistically at your free-market mantra and see it for what's its worth: a load of crap. The free market is free only to those who have the power to control it.
Eventually, we'll end up with a world of thirds. One third will be the ruthless, greedy ones who foist off inferior products on one of the other thirds, the clueless consumers. The last third will be the ones who make the world work. The techs, the engineers, the thinkers and tinkers. Which third do you want to be in? Right now it appears that the first third is in charge. The second third could care less as long as the ball games on the tube and the beer is cold. I guess that leaves progress up to the last third.
Re:It's called Google (Score:1)
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
Who uses anything but Google? (Score:2)
This is the free market taking care of things without government intervention. There's a prefectly good alternative (Google), it's free, and it's honest. Why complain to the FTC when you could just use Google? Caveat emptor, and all.
Who cares? (Score:2)
In all likelyhood, if the FTC steps in to regulate search engines, it will make things terribly complicated and fuck up good search engines like Google. Why do that when it's unnecessary? Giving people easy choices is good enough. It's not the government's responsibility to protect stupid people from making bad choices. You can lead a horse to water...
Disclaimer: I've never used MSN. I have no idea if it sucks or is better than Google. I'm debating under the assumption that nysus is correct in calling MSN a "crap engine".
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
In a word, yes. If a search engine gives you crappy results, find another one [google.com]. No irreparable damage has been done. No contracts have been broken. There's no need for government regulation. Should we regulate against ketchup potato chips because somebody doesn't like how they taste? NO! If you don't like them, you can buy another brand. The situation might be different if you could only buy ketchup chips (or only use MSN), but that's hardly the case.
I assume you're referring to my recent post in which I criticize an editor (Michael, I think it was) for blatant political comments in a story. You're forgetting that I never called for FTC regulation of Slashdot. There's a huge fucking difference between telling somebody he's being a stupid asshole and asking the government to regulate him or his website.
Right now, some of the Slashdot editors annoy me, and so I complain in the hopes that they'll change. I still find the site entertaining, so I still come here. If Slashdot got stupider than I was willing to put up with, I would leave. I would not, under any circumstances, call for FTC regulation of Slashdot.
If you stop to think for a second, you'll see that my views on this matter are entirely consistent. Please think very carefully before you ask for government to get involved in the Internet--you'll probably never get back the freedoms you lose.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
I'm not aware of the exact details of this law, but, assuming you're correct, I'd say it's an unnecessary law. I don't have any trouble figuring out what's an ad and what's not, and, if I did find a site that confused me in that way, I wouldn't use it. It's that simple.
Why do we need government involvement? To protect morons from themselves? If newspapers or search engines want to do that kind of crap, they'll quickly get a bad reputation (just look at what we all think of MSN), and only the lusers will use them.
Re:whatever happened to democracy? (Score:1)
as in: we're going to force these search engines to change, whether it is good for their business or not, whether or not what they're doing is illegal, whether or not it is actually hurting their non-paying customers.
at what point did these businesses come under government control? oh wait, that's right, under the socialist system which everyone believes the united states should be, all businesses are controlled by the government.
you can't argue, or at least i couldn't, that these businesses have some sort of principles to uphold in which they forsake those people who sponsor them and raise up those people who are simply riding on their coattails.
furthermore, it is not as if those offending search engines are excluding any sites - they are merely giving some sites precedence over others. "barrier to entry" indeed.
finally, speaking of that good which you call the fcc - they have taken a public resource in the form of radio waves and, ludicrously, decided to put it under their control. this is socialism - government control of the propaganda machine. this is not your touted democracy. democracy produces businesses that look out for their own interests, as the search engines are doing, and not businesses which seek to appease the fcc.
Re:Isn't this a capitalist society? (Score:1)
as in, there is no government intervention in a free market economy. this means that nader's actions of trying to punish those search engines is a non-capitalistic action.
besides the fact that there is not necessarily lying taking place here. simply because a link is placed higher in a list does not mean that someone is lying; it simply means that someone is getting a preference by the searching company.
Read the article (Score:2)
The fourth is a semi-legitimate beef, but the only perpetrator is Inktomi/Linksmart (whom they list a total of eight times in a goofy effort to inflate the severity of the 'problem').
The fifth (paying for editorials) is a gray area, since editorials (unlike correctly ordered search results) aren't free, and someone has to pay the electric bill. As long as you can't pay for a good editorial, who cares? Reviewers have been getting freebies since forever -- the will to honestly criticize a benefactor's product is what separates good reviewers from bad.
There are kernels of truth in the article, but they are fully obscured by the stool.
cheers,
mike
Re:Isn't this a capitalist society? (Score:3)
Incidentally, Google was not mentioned
Re:I read it, and Nader is still way off (Score:2)
Search: lung cancer
Results:
* Phillip Morris page claiming there is no relation to cigarettes and lung cancer
* Phillip Morris page announcing that YOU are the lucky winner of $2.00 off your next carton!
...
Search: open source
* Microsoft page spreading FUD
* Microsoft page unveiling their new "Shared Source" program
...
Search: Emacs
Results:
* vi
* vi
* vi
* vi
Re:whatever happened to democracy? (Score:2)
Re:Bullshit (Score:2)
Did you notice how rare those "sponsored links" are on Google?
I searched for "bookstores", and "books" and got exactly one sponsored link each (and neither was Amazon.com).
When I searched for "linux" I got none.
The Penis King (Score:2)
According to goto.com's listing, the page owner pays $0.48 per click-through.
I read it, and Nader is still way off (Score:2)
And what, may I ask, is wrong with that? I fail to see how higher placement without a big red line that says "this placement was paid for" (which would most certainly result in the search engines' fees being lowered due to reduced demand) constitutes "deceptive advertising". Come on, people, they're not claiming that a paid ad that pops up on "britney spears n00d" can cure cancer!
Why does it matter if someone paid for higher placement or not? If the higher placement results in items that the user of the earch engine finds useful, then no harm done. If it results in complete hogwash being promoted to the top, then the search engine loses credibility (ergo revenue), which no search engine is interested in doing.
Nader is just doing what he's done all his life -- making sure that business in general will collapse under the weight of a ten-foot-high stack of regulations. Why he is doing this is really not something I care to speculate on.
Re:I read it, and Nader is still way off (Score:2)
In the case of your first two examples, I don't see what the problem is, really. Obviously Philip Morris is not a trustworthy source for lung cancer information and Microsoft not a trustworthy source for open source information, but that does not make the hits any less valid. I wasn't aware that search engines were supposed to return truthful information (and in a lot of cases, truth is a pretty gray area anyway); they are just supposed to return hits for the terms I specified.
The third example is exactly what I think search engines should be doing, though. :-) (yes, that is humor...)
Re:whatever happened to democracy? (Score:2)
Oh no, they're not swayed or biased in any way. They post the truth, no matter how it affects the parent company. No reporter is ever told that a story should be buried..
2) It's kinda funny to me how many people respond to this strictly in terms of capitalism. What ever happened to democracy? I realize that the original promise of the 'Net is drying up faster than liquid nitrogen, but still, someone needs to say it.
There is no democracy in business. The CEO is god, and you do what s/he says.
Let's imagine that Google goes out of business. Poof -- suddenly you can't do a search without having to turn to a paid search engine. Yeah, yeah, search engines suck anyway, but... unless I am running linuxisbitchin.org, they are a good way to get people to come to my site (I run a humor site and do not blanch at appearances of .aol in my logs). However, if $$$ is causing me to be marginalized, that ceases to be a tool for me.
Are you trying to make money on your site? Or is it just 'for fun'? If it's for fun, and it's a good site, you will be just fine with the internet version of 'word of mouth'. If you're trying to make money on it, how the hell do you think business work without investment capital? There are only so many commercial spots, you pay for the top spot. The cost of the top spot is determined by the demand generated for that spot. It's called supply and demand. You are getting free advertising anyways, and your whining about not being first in the list?
Ultimately, it seems to me the barrier to entry is being raised here. I understand quite well that search engines are not the only way to promote a site, but from a strictly democratic point of view, this leaves one in a situation that's like running for President with nothing but a bunch of bumper stickers, while your competition has access to the airwaves.
A barrier to entry? Do you show up in the search? Yes. Then who cares. You just got FREE ADVERTISIING. A search engine IS ALL ADVERTISING. If you're not willing to pay for GOOD advertising, then yes, you are running for president using a refirgerator box and a sharpie. Only a moron would do that, then whine when he gets no votes.
3) A philosophical question, really. The airwaves are supposed to be a public resource, according to the FCC charter. Since the airwaves are regularly sold lock, stock, and barrel to companies that couldn't possibly give a shit about the public good despite this, what protects the Internet, given that the infrastructure is owned by a zillion institutions and there is no charter to speak of?
The Internet is NOT airwaves. You can put up any site you want, at any time you want, and have EVERYONE in the world visit your site for a meager $5/mo at a hosting company. No restrictions. At least, nothing like the 'real' airwaves. Now you're whining that your advertisting (serch engine = The WORLD's YellowPages) should be free? Hell. Why should I have to pay $5/mo for someone to 'store' my message? That should be free too. And my Internet Access should be free, because I already bought a PC, and I have a radio, and the radio is free, so why not the internet?
*Havokmon slaps all of Slashdot with a Tuna.
Re:READ THE ARTICLE before you dismiss this! (Score:2)
Unfortunately for your argument, there's no such thing as an "objective" search. Search engines use a variety of fuzzy, human constructed metrics to return their results: e.g. page rank, the number of times the search phrase appears, etc. It's not difficult to argue that a site which can afford to pay is likely to be more important than a site which can't.
If search engines want to use payment as a criteria, more power to them. It's ultimately up to the consumer to decide whether to use the search engine based on his perception of whether the search engine gives him the relevant search results.
Read the article. Dismissed your post. (Score:2)
Why should they? Search Engines are dot coms. They are companies. Their one and only purpose in existing is to make money, not to help you find "+hot +xxx +monkeys" with the utmost efficiency. They do a pretty good job, even if they do tweak the output a bit.
What nobody seems to understand is that nobody has an intrinsic "right" to receive pure search results. If you want them, write your own search engine.
Re:Read the article. Dismissed your post. (Score:2)
Are they actually lying, or just not meeting ill-informed assumptions? When I took Business Administration in college, one point that got hammered home in first year was that the function of business was to serve the market segment's needs and/or wants.
When you type in a query and get back a list of sites that probably have what you're looking for, your "needs and/or wants" have been met. If they are not, start your own company which gives away brilliant search results for free.
Re:Read the article. Dismissed your post. (Score:2)
Don't confuse me with the facts!
What the People Want (Score:2)
Too bad the people they reference are advertisinge execs.
It's called Google (Score:2)
Re:It's called Google (Score:2)
Bullshit (Score:5)
This is nothing more than lying.
See how it specifically points out Google, which has clearly marked "SPONSORED LINKS" at the top of your query results, with the actual relevant results below that? That is perfectly fine.
Read first, then post.
(karma whore)
What About the Yellow Pages? (Score:3)
Re:Bullshit (Score:5)
Want your ad to show up every time 'linux' is one of the keywords, here's your estimate according to: Google's AdWords Preview [google.com] My guess would be that the price is why you get none. Add a second keyword, like 'server' and it drops precipitously (probably still more than VA can afford): It's a bit pricy per impression, but with a little trial and error, you can be really specific about the impressions you get. For example, here's the stats for both 'linux' and 'Torvalds' in case you want to really target that biography you just wrote:
No, I don't work for Google, just played with this thing a lot while writing META tags...
Sometimes it works right (Score:2)
I have no idea what I did to get placement like that. And I'm not even selling anything.
Re:who cares? (Score:2)
Google ain't nowhere on there.
Read the article.
Jeremy
Re:essentially (Score:2)
You're looking for GoTo.com [goto.com]. They quite clearly and honestly state that their criterion for listing is the amount that the companies pay them. They even show exactly how much the company pays for each click-through! For some kinds of search it actually even makes sense; if you want to find a business, it's quite possibly reasonable to look at the ones that are willing to pay the most to attract your attention. It certainly helps to guarantee that they're being honest in the categories they're listed in, so they won't have to pay extra for erroneous click-throughs.
Now we're getting ridiculous. (Score:2)
Where is this magical search engine that looks like the description above. I've never come across anything like it whilst searching the web.
Better things to do. (Score:2)
I automatically assume on sites like AOL that search results where prioritized by amount of money paid to AOL by a site, using their search engine this becomes self evident in a matter of seconds. AOL Keyword: _sponsors_name_here_
Now all we need is for the rest of the search engines is a "How we get results" link somewhere on the page and that link takes you to a place that says, "you see what others pay you to see". Then no one can be hunted down by Nader, who should have better things to go after like kiddy porn and doggy/donkey style sites.
Nader if you are listening: people don't care how listings are compiled. If they did then Yahoo would be a search engine and not a "Portal". They would be much more grateful to you if you found a way to stop spam and check on those privacy policies that say "we will not give your name to anyone, except our partners" which is contradicktive and misleading to anyone with an IQ under 100
Re:How flimsy is this? (Score:4)
For those who can't be bothered to read the links directly from the news posting, here's a little translation of the whole bit:
Commercial Alert would like the FTC to investigate whether current methods of paid placement are deceptive to consumers, and whether that deception is strong enough for FTC intervention.
Don't think they could be intentionally misleading people? I've met people who didn't know the "click here to optimize your internet connection!" button was an ad the first time they saw it. I've also met people who have a hard time distinguishing between icons in their web browser and icons on the web page. This is much more subtle than either of those examples.
Don't think this is something the FTC would bother intervening in? The complaint has a little section entitled "The FTC Has Repeatedly Sought to Stop Companies From Concealing That Their Ads Are Ads", in which they argue that point as well.
It's a very simple three point argument, summarized with bold headings above each of the points. So there's my simple pitch for reading the complaint. I think you'll find it interesting and informative, and it will take less time to read than it's taken you to get this far.
To get back to the initial post, suffice it to say that the Commercial Alert complaint is obviously not asserting that paying search engines for targeted advertisements is wrong.
What's wrong with this? (Score:2)
Search engines are not a free service, they are a business, even if their main revenue is from advertising. This is one of the main reasons why Deja News sold the newsgroup search engine to Google. They couldn't make money from indexing Usenet so they went to the ill-received ratings service. Not that many people are going to pay Google to promote their old posts.
I'd rather have a search engine that can afford to maintain its links and continually update their content. I'd rather have a working search engine that can provide useful relative links than garbage links that have been broken since 1996.
Re:Who uses anything but Google? (Score:2)
It's simple ethics... (Score:2)
The signal to noise ratio of the web has been declining steadily over the past 8 years. Search engines allow us to sift through it all. Allowing them to multiplex relevant and irrelevant (paid) advertisements disguised as valid content is extremely unethical and will furthermore compound the problem of the declining signal/noise ratio of the web.
Re:who cares? (Score:3)
Not everyone's a computer geek. If you take J. Random User who barely knows how to surf the web, and there's a handy, dandy button at the top that says, "SEARCH", I'd be willing to bet that that's what's going to get clicked when it's search time. He's not necessarily going to even know about something like Google.
Also, Lycos has been running television ads, which will presumably get them more users who are less technically savvy. These are exactly the people who do need the protection -- in a perfect world everyone would know everything, in reality we've all get areas where our expertise is lacking.
Re:Search engines need $ too.... (Score:2)
Re:Search engines need $ too.... (Score:2)
Re:Search engines need $ too.... (Score:4)
No one is forcing you to use the free service of go.com, excite.com, or even google. How do you think they pay for hardware, bandwidth, and programmers? Selling banner ads won't keep a search engine going. As long as you know companies paid to be listed in bold (red, highlited, whatever) print, who cares?
Re:So what's socialism, to you? (Score:2)
Do you think I should be able to set up a shop on the Internet, promise to send shoes if you pay $5.00, and not send them to you?
Why not?
Should I be able to offer you $2,000 if you promise to be my slave for 2 years?
Why not?
(Both are, thank God, illegal.)
You make an interesting claim; do you care to back it up?
I hope they get rid of... (Score:2)
well okay, I really want em to get rid of em cos they're one of the reasons why a lot of elderly folks are scared of the internet, it lies to them all the time, and then they feel stupid and are afraid of it...
FUD all over again... but maybe this time the D stands for Distrust... not just Doubt
This is totally true. (Score:5)
I clicked:
Re:Isn't this a capitalist society? (Score:2)
Do not lift push mower while it is running.
"Not for use as a flotation device" labeled on an inflatable bird smaller than my hand.
And don't even mention the Darwin awards...
Re:whatever happened to democracy? (Score:2)
Do you look at stuff on Slashdot as 'news', or chauvinism ? Slashdot certainly bills itself as presenting news, but if another website constantly lathered itself in the same myopic tunnel-visioned puppy-love way over Microsoft or Sun products (or if it nearly exclusively ripped the many real shortcomings of Linux) it would get slammed as nothing more than a corporate mouthpiece.
Reduction in availability of varied information (Score:2)
Consider, for a moment, that the internet is a vary large library of information (techies excude the simplistic metaphor). We have ecentially turned over the library card catalogs (usually managed by libraries which are non-profit institutions) over to corporations who's goal is to make a proffit. This is an interesting choice to say the least. These companies make no commitment to index any particular content, or to index new content within a particular period... (with a few exceptions) introducing the potential to have valuable scolarly work lost amidst the noise of the internet. It's nice to have more information, but it introduces the possibility that truly valuable information is lost in the frey.
This brings into question the use of the internet as an information resource, is couneter-intuitive since this is one of it's primary and highly touted uses.
--CTH
--
Paid entry into searches... (Score:2)
Now, before the flames start-a-rollin', consider that all these search engines need massive storage space and processing power in order to return an accurate result. Now, we have a couple of legitimate concerns:
- Hardware costs money.
- Power for the hardware costs money.
- Software costs money...even the free stuff needs to be supported by someone.
- Power and facilities for the hardware/software/staff costs money.
Let's also consider that a lot search engines suck, and that their data is not exactly accurate.If a company or entity has the resources to pay for top inclusion into a search engine, then all the more power to them. In fact, if the site has a legitimate and verified page of information, then it _should_ preceed all the junk and garbage from an unverifiable source. I certainly don't expect an entity that can actually pay for search inclusion to waste their hard earned cash (or investors' cash if you will) on a pitiful entry. Yes, payment for service is certainly more verifiable than keywords from Joe Schmoe's random website that got crawled last year.
I'm assuming that evil marketing staff isn't involved in this yet...hence my point of view.
Re:Paid entry into searches... (Score:2)
The proposition that, more money = more valid information is indeed scary. It's scary because an information source with some greenbacks isn't necessarily more accurate than Joe Schmoe's website. I could only hope that entities paying for search priority have the moral sense to keep their information unbiased and accurate.
The problem of the little guy being heard isn't a new problem, regardless of the media front. However, we cannot forget that the Internet is not just a bunch of search engines. Anyone can still set up a website...and people constantly do! The power of the little guy has always been spread by word of mouth...and anyone who has Internet access can still get to his ideas and thoughts. Hearing his voice is a lot harder and has been a lot harder in tradtional print...and forget about traditional broadcasting altogether.
It'll get a _lot_ scarier if/when cable/DSL companies band together to stop all port 80/tcp traffic.
Re:What's wrong with this? (Score:2)
Rediculous (Score:2)
This is one of those times I think the phrase "Company X makes no guarantees about the usability of Product Y."
So what if they re-prioritize results based on paid submissions? It's a free service. Are these "consumer watchdog" groups actually implying that site contents have to be accurate, useful, or impartial?
While they're at it, maybe they should go after The Onion [theonion.com] for offering free Israeli homelands for all non-arab refugees [theonion.com].
How about shutting down /. for dispensing legal advice from a bunch of unlicenced crackpots.
Re:Well, DUH (Score:2)
What's the big deal even if people don't know what they are getting? If I run a web site and put a search engine on it, I should be able to return anything I want? What obliges me to tell a visitor if (and let's hope it never comes to this) I'm going to return goatse.cx links as the top entry for every search?
Search engines aren't a public service. Your tax dollars don't fund them. The only ones who have a beef here is companies who have paid and led to believe they're going to get top billing and then don't, but that's not what the complaint is about.
READ THE ARTICLE before you dismiss this! (Score:5)
The complaint is not that search engines are accepting money to have certain links pop up towards the top of a search, it's that they're doing it without LABELING it as such - essentially, they're trying to masquerade the paid links as normal, objective search data, to make it seem like the paid links are somehow more "relevant" to a search.
But god forbid anyone actually read the tiny article... that'd be far harder than just spouting your mouth off to look clever.
Here here! (Score:4)
It's ok not to read the article, but if you don't, then don't post!
Re:Isn't this a capitalist society? (Score:2)
Re:whatever happened to democracy? (Score:2)
Anyway, I'm repeating myself. Let me point you to my other comment [slashdot.org].
Mostly evident(was: Re:How flimsy is this?)h (Score:2)
Get me awa from such idiots as fast as posssible...
Isn't this a capitalist society? (Score:2)
If I run a search engine and Ford Motor Compnay pays me $x dollars a year to make it the only thing that shows up in a search of "ford", "mustang", "f-150", etc... who cares...
It's my business, my company, my website, my search engine.... Can't I do whatever the hell I want??...
Yeah... But, if I were a nice and reasonable business man I would add a notice to my site that said I take money for preffered search engine results... (But, it'd be in really small print somewhere...
--- My Karma is bigger than your...
------ This sentence no verb
Re:What About the Yellow Pages? (Score:3)
The big different in my mind is it is obvious that the yellow page ads are in fact ads. This should be obvious to anyone more than about 5 years old. For those it isn't obvious too, well, they're a lost cause anyway. Labeling won't help these people. Also, the ads in the yellow pages are sometimes more helpful than the one line listings. If nothing else, the ads often give the hours.
The pay for placement is a different story. This is deceptive. When someone does a search for something, the search engine is representing that it will try to return the most relevant results first. Pay for placement breaks this trust.
Re:So what's socialism, to you? (Score:2)
Re:Search engines need $ too.... (Score:2)
whatever happened to democracy? (Score:5)
A few points:
1) To those who say, "Hey, AltaVista is a business. Can you blame them?" Yes, we can blame them. Newspapers are a business, but you don't (well, you didn't once upon a time) see them printing corporate press releases as news.
2) It's kinda funny to me how many people respond to this strictly in terms of capitalism. What ever happened to democracy? I realize that the original promise of the 'Net is drying up faster than liquid nitrogen, but still, someone needs to say it.
Let's imagine that Google goes out of business. Poof -- suddenly you can't do a search without having to turn to a paid search engine. Yeah, yeah, search engines suck anyway, but... unless I am running linuxisbitchin.org, they are a good way to get people to come to my site (I run a humor site and do not blanch at appearances of .aol in my logs). However, if $$$ is causing me to be marginalized, that ceases to be a tool for me.
Ultimately, it seems to me the barrier to entry is being raised here. I understand quite well that search engines are not the only way to promote a site, but from a strictly democratic point of view, this leaves one in a situation that's like running for President with nothing but a bunch of bumper stickers, while your competition has access to the airwaves.
3) A philosophical question, really. The airwaves are supposed to be a public resource, according to the FCC charter. Since the airwaves are regularly sold lock, stock, and barrel to companies that couldn't possibly give a shit about the public good despite this, what protects the Internet, given that the infrastructure is owned by a zillion institutions and there is no charter to speak of?
G'nite.
Re:Paid entry into searches... (Score:2)
Re:Search engines need $ too.... (Score:2)
When you use the yellow pages you expect to find ads, because you're looking for a business. However, when you use a search engine you are often looking for information, and the objection is to the search engines taking advirtisments and then reporting them as containing whatever information you're looking for.
He's prolly just a little bit pissed off because.. (Score:2)
Would you like to see Ralphy doing more than just posing? Click HERE!
"What! No hits?"
"Nader-sense tingling! Corruption is afoot in the search engine business"
:)
Re:You can't really stop that (Score:2)
My question is did they try and charge Nader too much money for a listing ?
You can't really stop that (Score:3)
Taking money for listing improvment is something companies do all the time - its how a yellow pages works - the biggest placements cost the most money. This has been going on for time and based on what the complaint and comment says they are cleary seen as 'special' links.
Altavista and other companies have been doing this for years.
I would be interested in the FCC comment on this and their response - as the usage of a search engine and choice of which one is a choice made by the consumer then one would assume that this would negate some of the arguments about uninformed consumers - the banner ads and sponsored links would convince you they were taking advertising anyway.
Most people looking for information have a rough idea what they want so advertising wont have much of an effect on them - IE if you are looking for info on Open Source then you may only want general info - so you go there; if you are shopping then you may be led to a page reanked site, but bear in mind the engines return choices and thus you are not locked into only going to one place, and if the site you go to has what you want at a good price and quick service then all good and well, if not then thats what consumer laws are for, you dont sue a search engine if an online store rips you off, regardless of where you found the link.
IMHO if you follow the line that this practice is unusual then you are gullible - Radio stations dont get paid in cash for play anymore, they just get free food, gifts, invites to parties and junkets (but NO cash !)
Re:whatever happened to democracy? (Score:2)
Democracy is being voted off the island.
And what is this 'original promise?' Free exchange of information? And who, pray tell, was going to pay for the hugeass cables that connect everything? I guess you figure it can all be done cooperatively.
I refer you to the Great Leap Forward.
Democracy is a farce. Wake up.
PS - You're right. They should differentiate between bought and real results. And newspapers publish corporate press spokesmen as newsworthy all the time. Because, usually, it is.
-