CEO: What happen?
CTO: Somebody set up us the bomb.
CTO: We get signal.
CEO: What !
CTO: Main screen turn on.
CEO: It’s Search Engine!!
Search Engine: How are you gentlemen !!
Search Engine: All your organic clicks are belong to us.
Search Engine: You are on the way to destruction.
CEO: What you say !!
Search Engine: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Search Engine: pay us more for clicks now … HA HA HA HA ….

From the article, above:
In the example of a search for “dress shirts” we mentioned in our first story, the two top results were sponsored ads, not natural results — and there was nothing clearly demarcating them.

I see that comparisonengines.com said, in February, that ads from shopping.com will be clearly labeled. But I see that, as of early April, Matt found otherwise. He even confronted TheFind’s CEO with this specific issue, and the CEO confirmed it. Again, from the article above:

We asked Kumar about this, and he agreed that this was misleading, and apparently has since changed this (we no longer see the women’s clothing).

It smells like TheFind was caught red-handed and is now scrambling to rewrite history. Either that, or VentureBeat was irresponsible in its reporting.

http://www.comparisonengines.com/2007/02/10/thefind-monetizes-shopping-search-through-shoppingcom/

From the beginning the sponsored results have been marked. The misunderstanding is that not every search has sponsored results. In those cases, the first two results are unpaid and won’t be marked.

I entered the query “right hand ring” on theFind’s home page and the URL is http://www.thefind.com/main/query.php?qS=usr&query=right+hand+ring. This is not the same as what you have written. Do you work for theFind?

To all others,

If theFind needs to buy traffic from Google, then, can they make profit in the long run? Well, perhaps, only their investors need to be worried about this.

I am not convinced that their results are unbiased as items on the first page are all from affiliate programs. Nonetheless, they do return LOTS of products on any search I entered. But, the presentation has a long way to improve. Many same products from different vendors are spread out widely. It makes comparison a difficult job for end users. Isn’t comparison the primary reason why we come to theFind for shopping?

If, however, they were passing off the first two search listings as extremely relevant while in fact they were paid listings but not clearly marked as ads, that suggests something is very wrong, especially at a company that touts itself as unbiased.

In the example identified by the author, it’s a nice comic aside that these two listings happened to be LESS relevant than the other items on the page: women’s clothing in response to a “dress shirts” query.

Unless TheFind’s development team plays it incredibly sloppy, I can’t believe this was anything but a considered management decision. At a search company, hours of meetings go into the relevance and presentation of search results.

Ok, I’ll get off my high horse now.

I have also noticed that theFind displays the ’sponsor stripe’ on the first couple of results. Which seems fair to me.

However the issue is that there are many more results on the page for which theFind receives commission. It is pretty easy to peel the URLs and detect the underlying affiliate ids to commission junction, linkshare, etc. My guess is that some competitors brought this to Matt’s attention and he published the update.

No great mystery there.

Siva Komar’s response on theFind blogs looks reasonable – the fault is that it is somewhat belated.

I don’t think Matt’s trying to be malicious, but it seems strange that his views turned 180 degrees. I also read what Mr. Kumar had to say on TheFind’s blog too and it sounds legit to me (he commented above).

Everyone’s gotta make money, baby. But, most of us prefer they do it in way that doesn’t mislead. The author of this piece, Matt Marshall, is complaining about deception at TheFind:

Thefind blurs the line between ads and natural results even more than other sites. In the example of a search for “dress shirts” we mentioned in our first story, the two top results were sponsored ads, not natural results — and there was nothing clearly demarcating them.

Also, according to this article, after Matt called them on this, they changed their ways. WTG Matt!

So, I guess I don’t understand your point, Cay. Do you think Matt is maliciously spreading falsehoods?

Quick… cover your tracks, guys!