Users Confuse Search Results, Ads

January 24, 2005 D. H. McKee

Off

Only one in six 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 website had paid money to get displayed more prominently.
Google marks such ads as “sponsored links,” Yahoo terms them “sponsor results” and Microsoft’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.
Wired News: Users Confuse Search Results, Ads

Comments are closed.

About This Site

As a guy who occasionally curates art shows and wrangles artists together, I often have to edit and post artist bios, profile pictures, and artwork images. This can be a problem, since many artists and writers aren’t used to selling themselves. Artists rarely know how to present their art for display in a brochure, and writers aren’t used to writing about themselves.

Writers often treat the bio like it’s an interview or something. Maybe like they’re having a conversation with you, the reader. While it may work sometimes, the most common way to write a bio is to write in the 3rd person.

I’m like those writers, and I’m talking to you directly, unlike the common way to do a bio. You should see my About page. It makes sense to me, since this is a bit which describes my blog’s website. When I get famous enough that I don’t have time to talk to you, I’ll have an intern write everything in 3rd person. Until then, you get to talk to me.

Like blogs of old, this one is a personal document of the comings and goings of me. Articles I’ve written, links I’ve posted, videos I liked, etc. Here, a first-person perspective is the way to go, at least for now. So, this is my site. I’m D. H. McKee, a sometimes artist, sometimes writer. Mostly just a guy on the internet.