Search engines responding slowly to regulator's request

Associated Press ^ | 7-11-02 | MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer

[Oldeconomybuyer]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --

[Maceman]

In late June, the Federal Trade Commission said most of the Web's largest search engines don't reveal enough about the deals that increasingly give advertisers preferred treatment.

SO WHAT?? SOMEbody has to be first on the search listings, so why shouldn't it be the ones who pay the freight?

Is this all the Feds have to do? I use search engines all the time, and I have NO PROBLEM with the order that the hits come. If someone wants to pay for better positioning, why is that of concern to ANYONE? This is like having the EOC going after Hooters for not hiring enough men in red shorts to wait tables.

What a waste of time and money!!!!

[gcruse]

LEAVE GOOGLE ALONE!!!

[Silly]

I agree -- Google is awesome. Always indexes my sites and brings me traffic.

I can find ANYTHING AND ANYONE using Google. Just last week I found an old girlfriend I haven't spoken to in years -- she just started work with a new company and her name came up in a staff directory, complete with e-mail (I've been searching every year). We've started to correspond again, but she's getting married next month.

[Free the USA]

Index Bump

[snopercod]

If there's no payola going on, then why did google.com stop indexing FreeRepublic last February?

Before that, you could append "site:www.freerepublic.com" to any search and find hundreds or thousands of articles here. You could search for your screen name and find everything that you had ever posted since the beginning of FR.

After the first week in February, the same search that returned 1000 hits the week before returned only 1 or 2, or maybe none.

(I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the Washington Post is a paying subscriber to google.)

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Drawing the line between paid and unpaid search results -AP Breaking News
MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
(07-11) 14:16 PDT (AP) -- AH: With BC-CA--Search Engines-Advertisers, Bjt SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Virtually all the major search engines separate their results into paid and unpaid categories, though the dividing lines are frequently ...

[gcruse]

 We've started to correspond again, but
she's getting married next month.

While marriage the bride's name enhances,
The change of it screws up the chances
Of untold search engine romances.

[billybudd]

Who cares if there's any pay-for-display? As long as the engine comes up with good results, that's all I care about. You don't like the results AltaVista is giving you? Then go to Google! This is just a bunch of Nader-inspired cr@pola that the FTC is wasting their time with. They have nothing better to do, I guess.

[Libertarian_4_eva]

I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the Washington Post is a paying subscriber to google.

I think it had to do with the fact that someone posted a story on FR about how a man who owned a gunstore and sold other products wanted to get a paid listing for those other products "not firearms".

Google stated that because they also had guns on that website they would not list it because they do not allow paid ads for websites with guns on them even if they do not want to buy ads for the gun section of the website.

It also is quite funny that the first five results for handgun have websites that are against firearms.... infact most of the firstpage consists of websites that are anti second admendment.

The Freeping that google got I think has more to do with it then the washington post.

[snopercod]

Thanks. That's an angle I've not heard.