OT - Search engine question

George Patterson writes:

Jay Honeck wrote:
Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".
The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the
Cedar Rapids, IA airport!
How do they *do* that? It doesn't appear to be a paid
advertisement, since it appears along with the rest of the search
results.
This kind of stuff drives me crazy, since it seems to be a
deliberate -- and annoyingly successful -- attempt to "spoof" the
search engine. Why doesn't the Iowa City Airport come up first?

Well, Yahoo *is* paid in different amounts by subscribers, and you can
see that Eastern Iowa Airport has paid to subscribe (note the
"category" tag). That's why they're at the top of the results list
despite having nothing to do with the search.

No accusation of "pay for placement" fraud has ever been substantiated
against any major search engine to my knowledge. Do you have any
evidence Yahoo is currently doing this? (They all distinguish
carefully between advertisements and search results).

I think the category tag just means they got a hit in the their
semi-manual directory; but that may well explain the high ranking.

I see nothing suspicious on the page suggesting the www.crairport.org
is a paid result. The results at the right and the two above it are
clearly labeled "sponsor results" and set off by a different
background and a rule.
--
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