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Snap.com searches mix ads, results

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published May 16, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO - Internet search engine Snap.com is hoping to expand its sparse audience by making Web surfing more like channel surfing on a TV, but the startup might attract more attention with another change that further blurs the lines separating ads from listings retrieved by objective formulas.

Under a new format unveiled Monday, Snap will lump together search results financed by advertisers in the same column as Web links drawn from algorithms programmed to disregard financial incentives and find the most relevant response to a user's request.

As an example of how Snap's approach might blend results, a response to "used cars" might rank a result bought by CarSmart.com directly above a noncommercial link to Usedcars.com.

That combination is a departure from leading Internet search engines like Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, which isolate advertising results in shaded boxes at the top of the page or group them in a separate stack to the right under the heading "sponsored results."

The distinctions are meant to comply with Federal Trade Commission guidelines urging that Internet search engines provide "clear and conspicuous" distinctions separating their noncommercial results from ad-driven links.

Snap, launched in late 2004, originally intended to place a light gray "sponsored result" disclaimer next to the Web addresses of all the ads that crop up. Just hours before the new site's debut, Snap decided to make the disclaimers even more prominent by changing the coloring to bright orange and increasing the size of the type.

The light gray label wasn't prominent enough to satisfy Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, a Ralph Nader-based watchdog group behind a 2001 complaint that prompted the FTC to issue its search engine advertising guidelines.

Snap's new system for identifying ads "is neither clear nor conspicuous," Ruskin said after previewing the site with the gray labeling. "It is completely inadequate."

Snap thinks its new approach makes sense because the Web sites run by advertisers sometimes provide the information or merchandise most likely to satisfy a user's search request.

"For very commercial searches, you will see all commercial results," said Tom McGovern, Snap's chief executive. "We are not trying to mislead anybody."

By combining commercial and noncommercial results in the same column, Snap cleared enough space on its home page to provide a large enough box that will provide snapshots of each Web site that appears in the rankings.

These glimpses change as a user scrolls through the results with a computer's up-and-down keys, similar to a couch potato flipping through television channels with a remote control.

[Last modified May 16, 2006, 06:39:41]