How many of you use Dogpile to do your web searches? Well, I do. And I have been using Dogpile for about a year now. It’s okay, you get good results complied for you by Dogpile from different search engines. The “beef” I have with Dogpile is how they combine advertisements or sponsored listings into the results page. And these are listed differently from the rest of the organic search results. Sure, they label it as “Sponsored by” but you need to look carefully at the listings first before you will know that it is actually an advertisement. Worse, these advertisements can do right at the top on the search result list. I did a search for “grill pans” and on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th results, all are advertisements!

I have no problem with Dogpile making some money from advertisements, but at least they should find a more obvious way to differentiate advertisements from organic results. Or just add them with a different colour scheme! Or add a little box around it and to show that these are not the actual organic search. For me, I am used to Dogpile and I know that a lot of their listings are advertisements. But for the casual user, they won’t be able to differentiate them. Since Dogpile has Google adsense listings, isn’t it against Google Adsense’s TOS to do that or did Dogpile have permission from Google? If so, then why is Dogpile given different treatment than from the rest of us?

Don’t get me wrong, I think Dogpile provides a valuable service. Their interface is simple, easy to use and if you feel comfortable with Google, you will feel right at home with Dogpile. But I think combining advertisement with searches and placing them on the top results is just not right. It “tricks” the user into believing that these are actual organic results. A more ethical way is to set them apart visually.