[thelist] should we just give up and buy the darn keywords/rankings?

Joshua OIson joshua at alphashop.net
Mon Jun 4 16:26:14 CDT 2001


The article is about paid placement in web searches:

<snip>
Yahoo, the biggest search service, has started listing five sponsored sites
before its normal results. MSN, Excite, Ask Jeeves and About.com also charge
businesses for featured positions in search results. Google offers
advertisers "sponsored links" above and to the right of its search results,
set off by colored backgrounds that may make the paid listings look more
like ads than they do on the other sites.

And two of the biggest providers of search technology - Inktomi and
LookSmart, which are both used by Microsoft and dozens of other big
services - have started listing many more pages from Web sites that pay than
from those that do not. And Inktomi and Looksmart collect a fee every time a
user clicks on links to those preferred pages.

This growth in paid placement has done nothing to quell questions about
whether they are useful or ethical.
</snip>

-joshua





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