United States - FTC Consumer Protection Staff Updates Agency's Guidance to Search Engine Industry on the Need to Distinguish Between Advertisements and Search Results

The FTC’s consumer protection staff sent letters to nearly 25 search engine companies on distinguishing paid search results and other forms of advertising from natural search results.  The letters urge the search industry to make sure the distinction is clear between paid advertising and natural results. The letters update guidance published in 2002. According to both guidance letters, failing to clearly and prominently distinguish advertising from natural search results could be a deceptive practice. The updated guidance emphasizes the need for visual techniques to distinguish effectively between advertisements and other content to avoid misleading consumers, and it makes recommendations for ensuring that disclosures commonly used to identify advertising are noticeable and understandable. The agency sent the updated guidance to general-purpose search engines AOL, Ask.com, Bing, Blekko, DuckDuckGo, Google, and Yahoo!, as well as 17 of the most heavily trafficked search engines that specialize in the areas of shopping, travel, and local business, and that display advertisements to consumers.