Yahoo Search is getting a lot of good press lately for its new search engine design. A lot of the ink is coming from people who think Google needs some competition. Fair enough.
But Yahoo has a long, long way to go before it earns my trust. Case in point: Type spybot into Yahoo’s search box and this is what you get:
I’ve blacked out the names and URLs of the companies that purchased the ads that appear at the top of this list, because they don’t deserve any publicity. They’re deliberately capitalizing on the good name of Spybot S&D to lure unsophisticated or distracted Web searchers into clicking their links. Instead of getting the real thing for free, you wind up at a Web site offering an inferior product for a frightful amount of money. In both of these examples, the sales pitch is misleading and filled with unnecessary scare tactics.
It’s bad enough that these copycat companies are trying to steal the good name of the Spybot folks. In my opinion, Yahoo is playing right into their hands by not clearly differentiating the search results. Those “sponsored listings” at the top look just like the real search results that appear below. And I have already heard from two people who were duped.
Google, unfortunately, is only a little better. The same search produces two “sponsored links” above the real search listings. They don’t look exactly like the search results, but they also don’t look like ads. And that’s the point. How difficult could it be to put the words PAID ADVERTISEMENT beneath each listing? That way, we’d know exactly what it is. Both companies deserve scorn for deliberately deceiving their customers.
Ed Bott 