Wanadoo reproached for lack of clarity
17 June 2004
Internet service provider, Wanadoo, formerly freeserve, has been rebuked by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for misleading customers who visit its website.
The ASA found that the ISP had failed to make it sufficiently clear to visitors that certain search results posted on the site were in fact sponsored advertising links.
The ASA duly ordered the firm to ensure that all future links on the site provide a suitable indication of their purpose and source.
The matter was brought to the attention of the ASA by Andrew Ellam, managing director of a web design company, 2-Minute-Website.com.
Mr Ellam says he was concerned that the practice meant that small businesses, for which he regularly designs websites, would be illegitimately pushed further down the list of search results by such paid for advertising.
"Consumers are likely to be fooled into thinking these adverts are unbiased search results, and small businesses who should appear in the listings are suffering," he said.
The Times reports that Wanadoo declined to comment on the findings, other than to say they had read the ASA judgement "with interest."
Apply for your free web assessment - get a complete health check and optimisation action plan from Weboptimiser, the experts.
Related news
|
|
Leading brand search engine marketing since 1996
Founded in 1996 as an SEO company, Weboptimiser is today one of the Internet marketing sector's best-known and most respected search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) search engine marketing companies.
With a unique portfolio of brand-friendly services, including usability, contextual advertising and web analytics, a pioneering methodology that covers all 4 stages of interaction between a web site and its visitors, we make our clients sites faster, smarter, busier and more profitable.
