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Are search engines
confusing surfers?
By
Stefanie Olsen Staff Writer, CNET News.com, originale in
news.com
The Federal Trade Commission remains concerned that
consumers may not be able to tell when search results are
advertiser-sponsored, thanks to sometimes-unclear disclosure on the part of
search companies.
Last year, the FTC notified Web
operators--including Yahoo-owned AltaVista and America Online--that they
must clearly mark advertisements that appear within their search results.
Though some reform trickled through the industry, questions still linger
about how well companies label the commercial listings that appear when Web
surfers delve into their indices.
The U.S. regulatory agency said that so far,
it's pleased with efforts to disclose ads as "sponsored" when they appear on
top or adjacent to query results. But a more-complex form of paying for
exposure within search results--called paid inclusion--remains worrisome for
consumer watchdogs and the FTC.
Paid inclusion is a class of search marketing
in which companies, such as Yahoo-owned Inktomi, accept fees to "crawl" Web
sites more often so that fresh product data is included in the index. In
Inktomi's case, some marketers pay when Web surfers click on their listings.
Typically, those paid-for links are not marked.
"We want the search engines to be cognizant
that these are issues we hope they approach and make disclosure as visible
as possible, so that consumers understand what they're pulling up and that
there's some advertising linked to it," said Heather Hipsley, an assistant
director for the FTC's division of advertising practices.
"There's more work to be done because it's an
ever-evolving issue. Search engines are very dynamic, and there's been a lot
of mergers in the area," Hipsley said.
Yahoo is a target of concern because in the
last year it bought three of the largest Web crawlers that operate
paid-inclusion programs: Inktomi, AltaVista and Fast's AlltheWeb. It
acquired AltaVista and AlltheWeb when its
deal with their parent company Overture Services went through last week.
Yahoo has said that it hopes to augment earnings from search with paid
inclusion.
The Web giant and others argue that because
paid inclusion does not guarantee marketers placement in their indices, it
is not a wholly commercial enterprise. Rather, it's a service that helps
create a comprehensive database for consumer queries, they say.
Yahoo is widely expected to launch a new
paid-inclusion program as it begins to replace search partner Google with
its own technology. Complicating matters, Overture was slated to introduce a
paid-inclusion program that combined its two new crawlers this month, but
Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Lee would not say whether that will still happen now
that it has the three technologies to consider.
The Inktomi and Overture acquisitions were the
result of Yahoo's efforts to regain an edge in the search industry after
years of neglecting it. It also wants to compete with rival Google in the
lucrative commercial search market. Financial analysts peg commercial search
as a $2 billion industry this year and worth as much as $7 billion in four
years.
Paying the piper
Two programs expected to fuel that growth are sponsored placement and--to a
lesser extent--paid inclusion.
Sponsored placement allows an advertiser to
pay for higher ranking or prominence on a results page, relative to a
keyword search. Marketers bid for that placement, paying a set price for
each time a surfer clicks on it.
Overture and Google are the leaders in this
mode of marketing, licensing results to portals, Internet service providers
and other dot-coms, which split the fees from clicks. Web sites display
those ads off to the side, at the top or bottom of search results, marking
them as ads in compliance with the FTC's request last year.
Paid inclusion is less well known than paid
placement among search engine users, but it's no less popular among
marketers. The programs largely pertain to "editorial" search engines such
as Inktomi, AltaVista and AlltheWeb, which provide technology that scours
the Web and uses mathematical algorithms to compile results relevant to
users' queries.
Under financial pressure, many such services
have developed programs to guarantee companies that they would "crawl," or
search, their Web addresses more often. Though companies pay for the service,
all of the providers say that they do not guarantee a higher ranking for
customers in search results.
For example, Inktomi, the largest
paid-inclusion provider, operates Index Connect, which lets small and
medium-size sites pay a flat annual fee to have their Web addresses
regularly indexed. Larger sites such as Amazon.com and eBay--which typically
want assurance that more than 1,000 addresses are indexed--pay on a sliding
scale, depending on the category. These sites can pay anywhere from 15 cents
to $1 each time a Web surfer clicks on a listing--which is akin to the
paid-placement model.
In contrast, Google delivers unbiased search
results from a vast index of Web sites; the company does not accept fees for
cataloging sites.
Paid inclusion has sparked ongoing concerns
that the public might be misled about the independence of search listings,
however. While Yahoo argues that paid inclusion produces unbiased, relevant
results, search engine experts say that the practice is widely known to give
the listings of marketers higher rankings in the index.
"Search engines like to say it doesn't affect
the rankings. But there have been cases where rankings on AltaVista and
Inktomi were boosted (for marketers that pay)," said Danny Sullivan, an
editor of Search Engine Watch, an online industry newsletter.
"It's much more noticeable then it was in the
past," he added, even though out of the 1.5 billion Web pages being indexed,
only about 3 million pay to be crawled more often. "The way that it's mixed
in with ordinary content can be favorable to (marketers)," he said.
Sullivan added that there's little to no
disclosure for these kinds of commercial results.
"Consumers have no idea that this is
happening, and at the moment, that's in line with what's the FTC has
said--that paid inclusion doesn't need to be segregated, if there's no
boosting happening," he said. "I'd suspect if they were to look at it, and
saw that boosting was there, they'd want it to be separated."
All in a day's work
Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Lee said that as long as the search results are
relevant, the company is doing its job.
"Results are based on relevancy, irregardless
of whether a site participates in paid inclusion," Lee said, though she did
not define how that relevancy is determined.
When asked whether Yahoo should give the
public notice that some Web search results are paid for by the click, Lee
said "as long as consumers are getting what they want, that's all that
matters."
Some companies that offer paid inclusion,
including AlltheWeb and AltaVista, have disclosed it by adding a tiny link
labeled "about" near results pages. The link leads to a disclaimer that
describes how companies can pay to have their sites visited more frequently.
Yet Sullivan and others say that search
providers need to separate these results or label them conspicuously.
Gary Ruskin is executive director of
Commercial Alert, a consumer watchdog nonprofit, which filed the first
complaint against the search providers in 2001 that prompted the FTC's
investigation. Ruskin said that conspicuous disclosure should more than a
5-point type "about" link in the corner of a search results page.
"We think it's very important that the FTC
keep close watch on the search engines to ensure that they are not deceiving
the American public by failing to disclose that ads are ads. As search
engines grow in importance, it's ever more important if search engines are
being hijacked by commercial advertisers that the public know it."
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