History has tried to tell us that paying for search rankings is a very bad thing. However, it is interesting that Google has begun to accept payments for inclusion in some of its newest search products. This was evident recently with its Google Hotel Finder and Google Flight Search, where Google looks to be taking some kind of payment in order to be included in the results. This is also evident with Google Advisor, which offers links to financial services and products.
Extreme Tech brought this interesting topic to our attention in their article, “If Google cozies up to paid search listings, will semantic search suffer?” So one has to ask, why is this kosher now? Has semantic search changed the playing field and perhaps the rules?
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.
