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Paying to Get Listed at Search Sites

Paying to Get Listed at Search Sites

By Reid Goldsborough

When you pick up a magazine or newspaper, you want to know whether what you’re reading was written to inform you or to sell you something. It has long been a publishing tradition to clearly separate editorial material from advertising material. Both have their purpose, but both also have their place.

The same principle applies to the brave new world of online publishing, though because it is such a new world, norms and practices are still emerging. This applies as equally to Web pages as to the technology that often gets people to them — search engines.

Search engines have been criticized for not clearly indicating when sites that appear prominently in search results do so because they’re relevant or because these sites paid the search engine to make them appear that way.

Organizations such as Consumers Union (www.consumersunion.org), which publishes Consumer Reports magazine; and Ralph Nader’s Commercial Alert (www.commercialalert.org) have been vocal in expressing the importance for search sites to fully disclose when search results are paid for, as has the Federal Trade Commission.
The top search sites have responded by making some significant improvements, as Consumer Reports WebWatch (www.consumerwebwatch.org) has pointed out. Google, for instance, places paid listings under one of two “Sponsored Links” headings, one at the top of the page in a shaded box, the other to the right of the page. Yahoo does the same, though it calls its headings “Sponsor Results.”
If you’re a consumer, does it make sense to click on these paid links when looking for information? If you’re a business, does it make sense to budget marketing dollars for paid placement?

Kevin Lee, the most visible expert in the country on paid search, answers yes in both cases. He writes a weekly column on the subject for ClickZ (www.clickz.com), the well-regarded free online publication about online marketing; heads up Did-it Search Marketing (www.did-it.com), a New York City search-engine marketing firm; and currently chairs Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (www.sempo.org).

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