Bing - Please Label Ads Properly!

[superclown2]

I tried Bing again today. Yes the results were pretty good but I still have to use a magnifier to read the microscopic 'ad' labels, so I yet again moved on. How can I trust a search engine that won't let me tell the difference between adverts and genuine search results?

Frankly I'm surprised that no legislators have picked up on this but searchers are not so naive as to miss this (accidental, no doubt) way to get them to click on ads. I believe that it is a major reason why Bing is a poor second to Google which, for all it's faults, does at least label ads clearly.

[nickZ]

Why don't you let your visitors decide?
You pay ads to please you?

[lucy24]

^^^ This strikes me as something of a non sequitur.

[tangor]

disregarding the font size, the ads ARE labeled. Give your visitors credit for viewing the entirety of the page (including lables!)

[superclown2]

I don't advertise on Bing. And yes they are labelled but the font is so tiny as to be hard to spot. Google at least (perhaps under pressure from legislators?) at least label their ads clearly.

Why do Bing do this I wonder? I remember a time a decade or two ago when they put ads in a different coloured box, which made it easy to tell them from search results. To me they are now trying to obscure the fact that they are ads, which is deceptive. And that is one of the main reasons I don't use them.

[shadowlight]

Yes the ads are deceptive on Bing. Not each ad is labelled either, very small grey text at top 'ads related to: keyword' then a group of ads, none of which are labelled independently then a small grey horizontal line below the ads.

Page one for a certain keyword contains 8 ads as above, one block at the top and one at the bottom with 4 organics in between.

[superclown2]

Bing has always tried to hide ads by giving them tiny labels in a faint font - at least they kept the ads at the top so i knew where they ought to be.

Today I spotted ads amongst the SERPs. They had the usual almost invisible boxes next to them and most people would never even notice what they were.

We all criticize Google but at least they mark their ads clearly. Frankly I'm amazed that a company like Microsoft would resort to stunts like this, that belong to the 1990s.

[edited by: not2easy at 1:15 pm (utc) on Oct 29, 2023]
[edit reason] splice cleanup [/edit]