wheel - 4:39 pm on Oct 21, 2011 (gmt 0)

All the American advertising advocates got all wild up a few years ago over paid blogs being unethical because it wasn't apparent to visitors that they were paid endorsments. Didn't the US even pass legislation?

But not a peep over Google's display of ads versus organic. yet on my monitor, there is no visible difference between the paid endorsements of #1/2/3 in the listings versus the unpaid spots in ranking #4 and higher. And if ever there was a venue where consumers are clicking on things they think are endorsments (high ranked in Google) but in fact are paid ads, it's the top 3 adwords listings in Google.