Did you know Yahoo pollutes search results with ads?

Wow and I thought I was pretty net savvy! I did not know that! But this is probably because I’ve been a loyal Google user. I’ve also used Yahoo or Dogpile during my college research years but I’ve never really noticed the hidden ads! Cheers for the tip off ;)

I’m surprised for that I don’t use yahoo search. If you’re trying to search something, it sounds likely that the adds will get in the way. I’m better off with google.

Ah the link didn’t work, but from that tiny info I Googled for “searchmarketing yahoo” and found what you meant ;)

So I’d just tried the Yahoo search out (mine automatically uses Yahoo!7, the Australian version), and my search for “toy trucks” came out pretty innocent, actually. The two ‘sponsored results’ are under a blue background in the top, and the other links were all Cached, except for a .PDF file in the list.

Could it just be a US Yahoo thing?

I didn’t know that, but, recently while researching some election issues, I noticed that their results on things I searched seemed biased. For instance, almost everyone in the search about Obama, was against Obama. The same sort of thing happened when I researched the pro-life/pro-choice issue. I was trying to find a variety of answers and instead, I got the opposite. Well, I decided against getting an account, and perhaps I was having a paranoid moment, however, I don’t get those “moments” on Google or Ask.com.

Thanx for the tip! BTW, do you know if that is entirely legal re: the ads in the search?

Here’s the proof (they hide the page, so it takes some clicking to find it: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/ssp.php?o=INVALID&b=0

:)

I’ve always thought Ralph Nader had the right idea when he was trying to pressure the FCC on this particular issue, MSN stopped doing it, so did Ask Jeeves, but Yahoo has kept right on plugging.

The replies here convince me more than anything what I’ve believed for years, even when I worked there: people can’t tell the difference between the ads & the “natural” results…which means, it’s essentially deceptive advertising.