Earlier today I was digging in some referral stats and ran across the Worst Search Results Page Ever. And, no, this is not about MSN, Ask, Google, or even Yahoo.
Witness the results of a SlashMySearch.com video search for "zawodny" (because you never know when those secret videos are going to leak onto the vast interwebs):
Now before you click that image to get the full-sized version, it probably looks sort of reasonable, right? From a distance it does.
Now go ahead and look more closely. See if you notice the following things:
- It's very difficult to tell the difference between the advertisements (I mean "sponsored links") and the organic links because they're all on a white background. Most respectable search engines try to provide some very obvious visual clue that the paid links are different.
- The "BLACK HAT SEARCH TRAFFIC?" advertisement just below the "Also Try" line is classy. Really classy. I mean, who doesn't want a search engine CLOAKER that delivers top rankings?!?!?!?!?!
- The message in the middle of the page that tells you there were 0 results found is partially overwritten by an advertisement on the right side.
- Wait a minute! If there were no [organic] results found, that means THE WHOLE FREAKING PAGE IS FULL OF ADVERTISEMENTS.
- The main ads all feature images on the left, a tactic explicitly banned by Google because it tricks users into clicking advertisements.
Yikes!
But that's just me. I'm sure I missed a few things.
What can you spot?
Posted by jzawodn at March 26, 2007 08:41 PM
Odds are, this is a PPC portal that goes along with some context sensitive spyware. There are millions of these "search" engines that usually show only Overture or Google Adwords.
Look at their main page.. they claim to be the "only" site offering previews of results, yet the search takes you to a snap.com page.
Also it looks like they're offering a "pay to search" type feature where they pay you to search. It would seem like that's not only a violation of most Google or YPN TOS, but it's also a business model that assures they probably won't be around long enough to hear from adsense or ypn.
I would like to find out what's "zawodny's law".
I guess the ads perpetually appear on the "search results" page whose text that appear in bold dynamically changes to the value of the search term used.
** Find [phrase] at Netster.
** Still searching for [phrase].
Hey Jeremy...I think this search engine is much, much worse. That's just from a "who's connected" to it standpoint...
I am with Matt... I love "results 1 - 0 of about 0" and then they return at least 6 results... this must be the new math ;)
That page is pretty bad, but I think that DogPile gives it a run for its money.
A simple search for Yahoo Personals
http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/search/web/yahoo%252Bpersonals
Results 1-4 are sponsored ads
5 is organic
6-12 are sponsored ads
13 is organic
14-16 are sponsored ads
As you can see it's basically a page of sponsored ads with a few organic results thrown in. The sponsored ads look nearly identical to the organic results...
Elmer W. Cagape:
Zawodny's law: Don't fuck with simple.
http://blog.megacity.org/archives/002238.php
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/008084.html
I wonder if we will ever see an alternative to Google....
