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 a 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 labelled "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 be more than a five-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."
