To put it simply.. they make money by capitilizing on the stupidity (ignorance?) of 82% of the general public.


Survey: Users Confuse Search Results, Ads
The Associated Press

NEW YORK Jan 24, 2005 — Only 1 in 6 users of Internet search engines can tell the difference between unbiased search results and paid advertisements, a new survey finds.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported Sunday that adults online in the United States are generally naive when it comes to how search engines work.

The major search engines all return a mix of regular results, based solely on relevance to the search terms entered, and sponsored links, for which a Web site had paid money to get displayed more prominently.

Google Inc. marks such ads as "sponsored links," Yahoo Inc. terms them "sponsor results" and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN uses "sponsored sites." Such ads are placed to the right and on top of the regular search results, in some cases highlighted in a different color.

But only 38 percent of Web searchers even know of the distinction, and of those, not even half 47 percent say they can always tell which are paid. That comes out to only 18 percent of all Web searchers knowing when a link is paid.

Forty-five percent of Web searchers say they would stop using search engines if they thought they weren't being clear about such payments, yet 92 percent of Web searchers say they are confident about their searching abilities.

Deborah Fallows, a senior research fellow at Pew and the study's author, said the findings were surprising given that the same people are likely to know the difference between television programs and infomercials.

"We're still in the infancy of the Internet," Fallows said. "People are still kind of so pleased that they can go there, ask for something and get an answer that it's kind of not on their radar screen to look in a very scrutinizing way to see what's in the background there."

She said the results reflect blind trust on the part of the Web searcher rather than "anything nefarious on the part of the search engine."

Nonetheless, the Consumer Reports WebWatch studied the top 15 search engines and found many of them could do better in disclosing sponsorships, particularly when they practice "paid inclusion." That is when sites pay to make sure they are included in a search engine's index, though without guarantees that their links will be displayed more prominently.

The telephone-based Pew study was conducted May 14-June 17 and involved 2,200 adults, including 1,399 Internet users. Results based on Internet users have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=437251

There are too many stupid people on Earth.

you could have asked me this, i have been teaching my internet classes this for the past year or so

Good god yes.

Does everyone base intelligence on internet and computer knowledge?

No, but the fact that Bush won the election and this past weekend "Are We There Yet?" was the number one movie lends further credibility to the theory.

yanno, the more i read this the less i understand why people are stupid for not knowing this.

as long as they get their information, what does it matter if the site has paid to come out on top or not?

I really don't care too much, although I feel kinda badly for the people, but here is my question. If so many people don't realize that they are advertisements, just what do they think is the rationale behind calling these "sponsored links" and formatting them in different colors?? How do people rationalize these differences in their head? That's what I want to ask those 82% of the population.


P.S. According to my estimates, 18% of the board members that read the N&D forum daily have responded in this thread

i think people are just indifferent, as long as they get their information, it could be formatted in crayon for all someone cares, the ends justifies the means i would imagine

I understand.

But seriously, I know a lot of people who aren't computer savvy but they are very smart in other areas.

It's one thing to call someone who opens a worm stupid. That, while obvious to the regular computer user, is designed to be tricky and catch the beginners.

HOWEVER, search engines don't even try to disguise their advertisements. They are obvious to anyone who has ever seen an advertisement in any format before, not to mention they are LABELLED as ads.

Yes, people who can't figure out which links on Google are ads are stupid.

--PunkDavid

I know what you are trying to say but I know some very intelligent people who are very book smart but wouldn't even know what google is.
But yeah I see your point.

Idiots.

You know, it's really not even about whether a person has ever used a computer before. If you don't know that everyone is trying to sell you something, you're an idiot. If you can't tell the difference between a TV show and commercial, you're an idiot. If you can't tell where the stories end and the ads begin in a magazine, you're an idiot. If you can't tell that the link that is in bigger font, a different color, and is labelled "sponsored links," "sponsor results," or "sponsored sites" is an advertisement, you're an idiot.

I'm forever baffled by the number of people who don't understand that they are constantly being sold something in our society.

I will make sure my kids know this from an early age.

--PunkDavid

how can someone not know what google is?