Michael Zimmer.org

Looks like Google is again taking steps to blur the visual distinction between paid and organic search results. A reader at Google Blogoscoped posted an e-mail recently received from Google about his/her AdSense account:
We’re writing to let you know about a coming change to the appearance of your Google ads. Your ads currently display the default Google color palette, Seaside (formerly known as Mother Earth). In the near future, we plan to update the default palette to Open Air, a new palette containing the same set of colors, but without …

PSU information science scholar Jim Jansen was guest editor for a special issue of the Bulletin for the American Society for Information Science and Technology on the practice of paid search.
Jim was kind enough to ask me for a contribution on the ethical implications of paid search. My brief contribution, “The Value Implications of the Practice of Paid Search,” warns of the potential value implications of the practice of paid inclusion and paid placement of sites within search engine results, focusing on three interrelated values of moral and ethical …

John Battelle reports on a recent new feature within Google search results where “related queries” get inserted within your original search results. For example, when you search for “on demand,” you also get search results for “Comcast on demand.” (see image).
Battelle received the following statement from Google’s PR explaining the feature:
Google is testing an automated technique for detecting when an alternate query might help users find what they are looking for more quickly. For these searches, which are both commercial and non-commercial in nature, Google displays one or more alternate …

More blurring of search engine results and advertising:
A paper presented at the Sixth ACM Conference on E-commerce by Penn State School of Information Sciences and Technology professor Jim Jansen indicates that consumers exhibit a substantial measure of bias against sponsored links. The report details a study in which 56 participants, ages 18 to 29, gauged the results from 330 e-commerce result queries entered into a leading search engine, and the researchers concocted a fake search engine to display one page of the results from the queries. Sponsored links and …

The blurring of search engine results and advertising is a major concern given how search engines have become the “center of gravity” for the distribution of information and the acquisition of knowledge. ClickZ reports on a Consumer Reports WebWatch study which claims that Search engines continue to “inadequately inform consumers about the influence that advertising dollars have on placement and rankings of search results”:
A follow-up to a 2004 study examining the ways search engines identify and explain paid search results, the latest study found little improvement over last year, and …

One of the things Google brags about with its Adsense and Adwords programs is the high relevancy of the ads placed alongside its search results. Their logic is that the more relevant the ads are to the search, the less intrusive they are. Similarly, they’ve banned the use of banner ads, and try to make the advertising match the aesthetics of entire search engine results page.
These claimed benefits can also do harm. The difference between search engine results and paid advertising is blurring. The more relevant and similar in appearance …

Andy Beal at Search Engine Lowdown notes this report of the Pew Internet and American Life Project’s study which suggests that only 18% of search engine users can tell the difference between paid and natural search engine results. Beal seems to applaud this:
So what does that tell us? Well, to me it suggests that the search engines have everything finely tuned and doing a great job. If the average user cannot tell the difference, it likely means that they are finding the most relevant results in both paid and natural …