22 replies to this topic

[Jill]

Stephanie Olsen has an interesting article on ZDNet about paid-inclusion results being mixed in with the "natural" results.

Excerpt:

The Federal Trade Commission remains concerned that consumers may not be able to tell when search results are advertiser-sponsored, thanks to sometimes-unclear disclosure on the part of search companies.

My favorite line from the article:

In contrast, Google delivers unbiased search results from a vast index of Web sites; the company does not accept fees for cataloging sites.

Jill

I realize this should probably go in the articles or news section, but since it's about paid-inclusion, I figured it could go here.

[Bill Slawski]

I believe that there should be a disclosure for those sites also.

There are some questions that come up:

If some sites are spidered more frequently because they pay, but otherwise relevancy is still maintained, why should there be a problem labeling those sites?

Would people be more prone to participate in pay for inclusion or less, if those results were labeled?

Would searchers be more prone to visit one of those sites or less, if it had a label?

If you owned a search engine, and you had to include disclosures, and labels, what words would you use?

[awall19]

I think as advanced as technology is becoming many of these companies still have old style thinking and think it is easier to manipulate them than to win the trust of customers.

Is it any wonder that so many people talk up google...is it any wonder they stick out. Certainly other companies cant exactly follow them, but most of the other portals and engines seem clueless.

How can this seem so obvious to me and not be seen by any of the other portals. Certainly they read media and see posts like these.

[projectphp]

That article is a bit muddled which, ironically, kinda proves its point I think URL inclusion, in the form of a flat fee for inclusion of a single page for a year, is very different to SE sanctioned XML Trusted Feeds, and the two need to be seperated in context. Beyond the guarantee that a URL will be in a specific SE index, URL inclusion offers no possible ranking benefit over natural search. Trusted feed, on the other hand, offers the ability to manipulate the data you feed the Search Engines, which is surely very different from a mere guarantee to crawl.

Looking past that, the question is really what defines advertising? If I pay to ensure a page is in the index, is that advertising? Search engines blur the lines of what is traditionally defined as advertising and what isn't, and there is no off-line analogy that is comparable. Is a free listing an ad? If the search is for "mortgage", what else could it be but an ad? Or is it commentary, in the same way a game review is not an ad? The question then becomes is URL inclusion more like a game review, in which a user has no control over the outcome, or more like a full page game ad in a newspaper? Personally, I believe it is the former for single URL inclusion, and neither for trusted feed.

If people want to label PI, and more specifically Trusted Feed, as advertising, then surely Trusted feed should gain some ranking benefit. Otherwise, you are paying per click for the privilege of what exactly? Being ranked exactly as you would have otherwise? For mine, that is extremely unfair. You get branded an ad, which does have at least some negative conotations, but get no benefit beyond complete indexing of all your pages.

As opposed to Paid Placement, such as AdWords or Overture, on which you can know where you will appear and for what phrases, Trusted Feed makes absolutely no ranking guarantee. Being labelled an ad on top of this is a little unfair.

Also, I think supreme caution needs to be exercised before labelling such listings as ads. Surely labelling these pages as advertising may have the effect of encouraging SE to give such listings a boost. After all, if they are clearly labelled as ads, then why do they need to be ranked in the same way as pages that are naturally crawled? By labelling trusted feed listings as something seperate and distinct from the rest of the results, then surely these pages can, perhaps even should, be ranked seperately. Most likely, this will mean placing them ahead of the remaining results. Personally, I am not confinced that is a good thing.

In contrast, Google delivers unbiased search results

I have issue with this statement. All SE results are biased, they have to be. If there was no bias, how would pages be rated? Google, and all SE, give bias to lots of things, like heading tags, links etc, and understanding the bias is why SEOs exist.

The notion that the Google algo is unbiased is a misleading, and in using this as a contrast to Trusted Feed to imply that Google is somehow intrinsically morally superior is not a valid argument. Google decided against trusted feed for a variety of reasons, many of which I am sure are business decisions, as opposed to morally based, and simply because Google doesn't engage in trusted feed is neither here nor there in regards to either the labelling of such listings, or the validity of such an approach.

[MakeMeTop]

Good, reasoned argument about PFI is a very healthy thing.

I completely agree that paid spidering should not be labelled in any way as advertising. There is no boost in rankings for being in PFI - only through being able to adjust your pages through rapid spidering. You can adjust your pages for Google in exactly the same way for the same ranking benefits - you just have to wait longer.

Trusted Feeds fall in to a grey area. Well optimised feeds do do significantly better than standard results - but badly optimised feeds (which appear to be many of them, as far as I can see) will get buried by well optimised pages.

Should they be deemed advertising? I think all sites that employ an SEO should be labelled as advertising. Part of the reason that there are articles like this, is that many people have never used different variations of paid inclusion. Maybe my my introduction to trusted feeds (if you haven't read it) may introduce some intelligent debate

[lots0]

I think all sites that employ an SEO should be labelled as advertising.

Interesting... Not sure I agree, but definitely something for me to think about.

[MakeMeTop]

I should have added "if PFI listings were to be labelled as advertising" - then my logic is that all SEOd sites should be labelled the same way - after all, they have paid to get better rankings

[bwelford]

I think all sites that employ an SEO should be labelled as advertising.

I wonder whether the words are getting in the way of the ideas here.

Of course any effort put into making a web page more visible either with human visitors or with search engines can be viewed as promoting or advertising. The verb advertise, according to Webster's New World Dictionary, means:
1. to tell about or praise (a product, service, etc.) publicly, as through newspapers, handbills, radio, television, etc., so as to make people want to buy it.
2. to make known; give notice of ...

The real question relates to Paid Advertising. This is where you pay for space in some medium. So PPC is Paid Advertising. SEO is not Paid Advertising.

[fred]

Hi

i have to agree with bwelford not only because we are from montreal but because he has a dictionnary

Is writing a better copy adverstising?
I don't think so. It's only improving your content, if it helps your ranking then it's an added bonus.

If you higher some company to create an advertising campaign but don't display it to the public is it advertising ?

SEO doesn't guarantee visibility.

or they would have to say that top 10 ranking pages are advertised but the other results are not (page 3 + ) because they are not

2. to make known; give notice of ...

.

If you don't rank well your are automatically not doing advertisement ?

[MakeMeTop]

>SEO doesn't guarantee visibility.

Nor does paid inclusion - so why should one be labelled as advertising and the other not?

That was my point

Obviously, paid placement (PPC) is advertising - it does guarantee visibility and is totally different to SEO/Paid Inclusion.

[Jill]

I agree that typical paid-inclusion does not necessarily need to be labeled in anyway. But there's something about the xml feed/pay-per-click stuff, that seems as if it should be labeled. Especially since it definitely has the advantage of showing the user one thing and the search engine something else.

Even if it just had a little star next to the result that said, "trusted feed" or something. Might even be better for it to be labeled that way.

Jill

[Scottie]

Well, to use my offline advertising analogy-

I might pay someone to write up and send out press releases about my company. There is no guarantee that the story will run, even though I paid for it. (SEO)

If I pay the newspaper to run my ad ROP (any page- whevever they choose to put it) it's still a paid advertisement, even if it ends up on the Obituary page and none of my target audience sees it. (PI)

Should every newspaper story that was discovered via press release (whether sent by a PR firm or the business owner themselves) be labeled as such? No- it is still an editorial decision as to whether the story merits a feature or a mention.

If I paid the newspaper, that should be disclosed. If I paid anyone else to try and get me in the newspaper, it's a moot point. It is still the decision of the paper whether the information merits printing.

If I paid the SE to be listed, it should be disclosed. If I paid someone else to try and get the SE to list my pages, it is still the decision of the SE algo whether or not to list that page.

[bwelford]

I agree, scottiecl. In other words it depends who owns the "space" on which the message appears. If the owner of the space "rents" it out to you for your message, then that's Paid Advertising.

[Scottie]

To take it a step further...

How would you feel if you read an article in the paper about maintaining pools that had quotes from area pool service companies, then found out later that those companies had paid the newspaper in order to be included in the article?

It doesn't matter if the paper would have included those quotes anyway... the fact that they were paid to ensure that those quotes were included should be disclosed to the reader.

It's the same with editorial (free) search listings. If the search engine has been paid to ensure that they are there... that should be disclosed regardless of whether or not the listing would have been there anyway.

Just my

[projectphp]

by bwelford
I agree, scottiecl. In other words it depends who owns the "space" on which the message appears. If the owner of the space "rents" it out to you for your message, then that's Paid Advertising.

By Scottiecl
If I paid the SE to be listed, it should be disclosed.

Analogies are good, but they aren't actually a reason for choosing something, they are simply a debating tool to draw parallels to make the central theme of an argument better understood.

Trusted Feed is not like any other form of contractual "advertising" agreement on the planet, in any other media or form. Trusted Feeds don't "rent out" space, in fact, they make no guarantee you will even get space.

The facts about trusted XML feed are:
1. You pay per click.
2. There is no ranking guarantee.
3. The Advertiser makes no offer to list the site based on anything other than an algorithm that also lists people for free.

In this way, it is like a book of phone numbers, with some businesses and some homes, in which businesses pay and homes get in for free. The are all still, however, ranked alphabetically.

This in no way relates to a newspaper, despite the popularity of that analogy . You are essentially paying the SE for several things:
1. Complete indexability of all pages on a site.
2. The guarantee that your site will not be rejected without an explanation. That is worth plenty to many businesses, and circumvents the whole "should Google have to tell us if they drop our site" arguments seen in so many places.
3. The ability to adjust the content the SE is fed, without having to change the physical pages they relate to.
4. Accountability. Again, a business model which actually has a contractual agreement is better than one in which a supplier has no agreement with you. Paying SE for traffic is, in many ways, good for all concerned. You get to cash flow and plan for X level of traffic, and the SE get a revenue stream. Win-Win.

A trusted feed is still ranked by the same criteria as any other page, except, perhaps, link popularity. But that is a moot point, as Link Analysis was always a method of measuring "importance", and if an SE has editorially approved a site, surely it is of good quality. The rankings of a page still depend, beyond the natural benefits of 100% indexability,upon the skill of those putting together the feed.

That is so very different to any other form of advertising anywhere else, and has no direct parallel in either the off-line or online worlds.

In deciding whether such "advertising" (for want of a better word) should be labelled, the ethical / moral aspect is only a part of the question. Equally important, IMHO, are that we all understand the consequences of such a decision. Will labelling Trusted Feeds as ads be beneficial to the search results, or will it just encourage the SE to give Trusted Feeds a (massive) rankings boost? After all, the "ads" are clearly labelled, so lets put 'em first.

Labelling isn't the only answer to this question. Ensuring that Trusted Feeds are not given unfair advantage is, IMHO, equally important, and probably more relevant in many ways.

As a last question: If Trusted Feed should be labelled an ad, what about affiliate links? You are essentially doing the same thing, renting out space on your site to make money. That is advertising in my book, and far more deserving of labelling than is Trusted Feed.