FTC Demands Search Engines Separate Paid Advertisements From Search Results 230
An anonymous reader notes that the FTC has sent letters to search engine companies (PDF) telling them to make sure advertisements are clearly distinguishable from search results.
"According to both the FTC staff's original search engine guidance and the updated guidance, failing to clearly and prominently distinguish advertising from natural search results could be a deceptive practice. The updated guidance emphasizes the need for visual cues, labels, or other techniques to effectively distinguish advertisements, in order to avoid misleading consumers, and it makes recommendations for ensuring that disclosures commonly used to identify advertising are noticeable and understandable to consumers. The letters note that the principles of the original guidance still apply, even as search and the business of search continue to evolve. The letters observe that social media, mobile apps, voice assistants on mobile devices, and specialized search results that are integrated into general search results offer consumers new ways of getting information. The guidance advises that regardless of the precise form that search takes now or in the future, paid search results and other forms of advertising should be clearly distinguishable from natural search results."
Re:Sounds like BS to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Regulating advertising is a function of the FTC.
Just because you are not paying is no reason why advertising should be represented as anything else.
Re:It's obvious that the FTC has no clue (Score:5, Insightful)
By showing ads. That does not mean they are allowed to lie about results.
The last thing I want is advertising I cannot distinguish from real results.
Re:Sounds like BS to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is thre a need to do this.. What does it matter?
Deception. The FTC is saying you can't make a paid-for ad look like a legitimate search result, because it's deceptive and unfair to both the consumer and other legitimate businesses who don't have the resources to pay Google boo-koo bucks for prime ad space. Not saying it's right or wrong, just pointing out the rationale.
As part of captialism if people get tired of getting the advertisements they will go to another search engine.
Ah, no, actually, that's a function of the free market, not capitalism in general, and as it should be abundantly clear at this point, there is not and never has been such a thing as a free market (that's not necessarily bad, BTW).
There is no reason for this.
Sure there is! It might not be a good one, or one you agree with, but there is a reason. There's always a reason.
Re:Sounds like BS to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like BS to me (Score:4, Insightful)
A government is free to set whatever rules it wants for doing business within their jurisdiction, you have as a business you can either choose to comply or choose not to do business there, noone is twisting your arm or forcing you to do anything.
There needs to be a separation because showing paid for results as matched search results is deceptive.
Re:Sounds like BS to me - quite the opposite (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually think that, when it comes to regulating Internet or media companies, nothing could be more important than this.
This is the ultimate line in the sand for an advertising company (or a consumer of ads). I'm generally a defender of Google, but if they were to cross this line then - for the first time - I would think they have truly become the evil that they disavowed in their inception.
And this is about the Internet in general. We need to know whether content is paid or not if we are to preserve a space for the the unpaid. Otherwise, the paid opinion will always win out since it has the money to promote itself.
Re:Sounds like BS to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Google never indicated, to me at least, what was in the search results. I don't see how it could be deceptive.
And even if it was, does that matter, since I don't pay Google one red cent for the service?
Perhaps this will make Google results more useful. I'm rather fed up with doing a search and getting all this garbage up front which has nothing to do with the search, but tries to lure me to some business or review site. Ever notice how Urban Spoon and Yelp show up first, even when the site you are looking for has their own website?
Long-time users of Google may agree here, the results are becoming less useful as time goes by, obviously because paid or revenue producing pages are promoted over utility.
Re:Sounds like BS to me (Score:5, Insightful)
So there is no space between "no regulation" and "nanny state"? That's what you imply here, and that is how just about every regulation "debate" turns out these days.
Re:It's obvious that the FTC has no clue (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact that it is called a search engine and not an advertising engine?
If you really can't grasp this I am not sure I can help you.