In my last post, I made the comment that paid placement and paid inclusion are okay as long as they disclose what they truly are. I also believe (as I have stressed in previous posts and discussion boards) that these advertisements need to remain relevant to keyword searches. This thought led me to Google’s About page to see how they defined themselves and what their company mission entailed. What I found was quite interesting and relevant to my search.
Google defines themselves as “an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second. Let’s focus on usually. It is interesting that Google does not just say “free service that returns results in a fractiono of a second.” In my opinion, Google adds the usually because of the fact that the Internet, and its content, is always changing. How can a company like Google guarantee that its service can 100% of the time provide accurate results? When it comes down to it, this is the ultimate in disclosures. Not only does Google disclose that although it tries, sometimes non-relevant content can turn up in results, it makes a full-on effort to disclose that it is in fact a business that profits by advertisers paying-per-click on their site. Their site reads as follows:
”As a business, Google generates revenue by providing advertisers with the opportunity to deliver measurable, cost-effective online advertising that is relevant to the information displayed on any given page. This makes the advertising useful to you as well as to the advertiser placing it. We believe you should know when someone has paid to put a message in front of you, so we always distinguish ads from the search results or other content on a page. We don’t sell placement in the search results themselves, or allow people to pay for a higher ranking there.”
This solidifies, in my opinion, that Google is making every effort to make their tactics known and provide its users with information about their tactics and how users can capitalize from the use of these tactics. Google also helps users search more efficiently and provides advertisers easy, affordable ways to get their Web sites seen. With these services, tactics and disclosures, how can Google’s method of paid advertising not be ethical? Perhaps other sites need to employ these methods in an effort to keep the watch dogs off their tail and allow users to continue to search for free – like Google blatently states – their company is one that provides a service to the users and also runs itself as a business that needs to make a profit in order to provide that service. Without the ads, there is no Google. Be straight with your users and they will come!
