ASIST Bulletin on Paid Search
The December/January 2006 American Society for Information Science and Technology Bulletin focuses on paid search–advertising in search results, search engine rankings based on paid content, click fraud, search engine marketing, and similar topics.
In light of recent concerns over privacy and using certain search engines, a paragraph in Michael Zimmer’s The Value Implications of the Practice of Paid Search stuck in my mind:
"The practice of paid search has motivated a drive for search engine companies to track users’ search habits. Search providers can provide advertisers with far more comprehensive and sophisticated consumer profiles if they maintain databases of users’ search histories. Increasingly, these histories are being matched up with individual searchers in order to provide individually targeted paid search results and related advertising. While the increased personalization of search engine results and targeting of advertising or paid search results might prove beneficial for searchers, such practices threaten the value of privacy."
Unfortunately, ASIST does not provide a permanent URL for the current Bulletin issue. The URL above will change in a few weeks when the next Bulletin issue is available online. I’ll try to remember to come back to update the URL.
