YAHOO!, MSN, and other search companies are mixing in pay per click ads with their other web search results without any real plain or apparent notice of the change. While obviously within their rights to do so, they do not seem to care about what we the consumers think, or what this has done to small business web site owners who can not afford expensive advertising but who are technically savvy and very hard working. It does not matter to companies like Yahoo! that this change has devastated those small businesses that have historically supported these engines or directories, because this move only benefits these big search engines (e.g. MSN, YAHOO!, or others that use this tactic), and other big companies and businesses with deep pockets. This is being done simply to line the pockets of these search engines and their executives with shared pay per click advertiser revenue and to satisfy shareholder demand for more profits. Not notifying users that the majority of their search results are now paid ads while continuing their business under the guise of and calling themselves true web search engines is at best devious and most certainly an insult to the intelligence of web surfers. You the web surfer / internet user should be appalled and outraged that your trust has been built that you were not seeing paid ads in real relevant search results and for years these engines operated and gained the trust of web surfers under that premise. Then, without as much as a peep, gone are the real relevant results and there in their stead are a mountain of pay per click links filling the search engine results. Is this what it’s come to for the Yahoo’s and MSN’s of the world? Is it all entirely about making money off you the surfer and gone are the days of providing a real value added service? It would certainly seem so.

In addition, be aware that if you are a pay per click advertiser that a backlash is occurring. There are already folks out there with software that is viral in nature, meaning easily and quickly downloadable for fast spreading, but not in any way a virus. This software runs on a user's local machine and starts each time a user logs onto the web. It runs in the background, visits the search results pages of these search engines for specific popular key word searches, and automatically initiates clicks on all the links on the search results pages. Since this software is perfectly legal (no IP masking or anything else), and only automatically clicks on some links, its use will grow as a response by those who feel cheated by these search engine changes. Thousands or even hundreds of thousands of clicks on pay per click links will be generated with no real sales or revenue for these advertisers. Thus, pay per click advertisers will be paying for clicks that will provide massive revenue for the search engines, but little to none for the advertisers themselves. Who knows maybe the search engines like Yahoo! or MSN are ultimately behind this software too. It sure would benefit them in a big way to get at the big dollars from their advertisers, and of course knowing how much they really care about folks it certainly is within the realm of possibility.

All this could be avoided if only these search engines would come clean and give plain notice about this change before anyone uses their web search. Alternatively, they could make very clear that their search results are largely paid ads, as opposed to the traditionally relevant search results provided for years. In the case of Yahoo! they should provide a large clear message and a link to their directory in big bold font right on the home page and not wait until the first results come back. At the very least they should make quite plain the distinction between a paid link and a page ranked with traditional rules. In addition, they should not completely drop the small businesses that were highly ranked under the traditional rules as this simply destroys business as we know it today as well as the trust of the Yahoo surfer when they find out the truth. The fact is the surfer is misled and their trust has been violated. The small businesses which are the so called backbone of America and the world have been stomped on. In fact all the folks that made Yahoo! and others like it what they are today have been downright violated.

These companies are perfectly within their rights to change the products and their business models. After all, it's their software and business. But to sneak in all the paid results without clear notice, and to drop many relevant sites altogether from their web search results, is simply insulting to you, the search engine user, and is unacceptable based on traditional results provided and considering the foundation of these businesses.

Do you want the best search results? Bookmark and utilize search engines that rank sites using traditional relevance rules, and where sponsored links are clearly marked and/or not intermixed with real relevant results. Or else, be sure the search engines you use notify you upfront about the use of paid ads in search results. You would want to know what is a big company paid ad wouldn't you? Use search engines and technologies that do not insult your intelligence and take advantage of your patronage. Use those that appreciate your business like:

Google

AOL

Ask Jeeves

Excite

 Direct Hit