Research has concluded that there is a lot of advertising going on with the major search engines that are deceptive. To help promote sites, advertisers are including false accusations to help bring web surfers to their websites. But are the major search engines really “invoking” this kind of behavior? Read below to learn more about this article.

“A spyware researcher charges that Google and other major search engines are running ads that “push and exceed the limits of ethical and legal advertising.

Researcher Ben Edelman issued a report on pay-per-click advertising Monday, which also noted that search engines aren’t liable for distributing false and deceptive ads. Under the Communications Decency Act, “Google, as a provider of an interactive computer service, may not be treated as the publisher of content others provide through that service,” Edelman writes. “Even if a printed publication would face liability for printing the same ads Google shows, it appears that Google may invoke [the CDA] to distribute such ads online with impunity.”

Google says it fights deceptive advertising.

“When we become aware of deceptive ads, we take them down,” a Google spokesperson explained in an e-mail. “According to the Google AdWords Editorial Guidelines, ‘If your ad includes a price, special discount, or ‘free offer,’ it must be clearly and accurately displayed on your website within 1-2 clicks of your ad’s landing page.’ We will review the ads referenced in this report, and remove them if they do not adhere to our guidelines.”

Google’s AdWords Content Policy also details at length the kinds of ads it forbids, such as pitches for spamming services, drugs, and prostitution.

But as Edelman sees it, Google isn’t doing enough, despite the apparent lawfulness of its practices. “Google created this mess—by making it so easy for all companies, even scammers, to buy Internet advertising,” he writes.”

Read the rest of this article HERE.

From our point of view, it seems like it would be pretty difficult to actually remove all of the scam advertising that is added daily to the major search engines. While the bots and spiders do as much as they can, its pretty difficult to get rid of everything. The whole idea of “invoking” this kind of behavior though sounds a little bizarre. There is no way the amjor search engines could be doing as well as they could if they were invoking unethical behavior.

Tags: Computer Protection