Yahoo and Google may have made a move to restrict unlicensed pharmacies from advertising on their search engines, but their policies on online sex ads have slackened considerably.
The effort to
police drug advertisers follows pressure from legitimate pharmacy trade groups about the illegal sale of drugs online. In many instances, the unlicensed pharmacies that are buying online ad space are
based overseas.
Yahoo's Overture Services, which sells advertising that appears on Yahoo, MSN, and various search engines, announced last month that they would discontinue serving ads for Internet
pharmacies in light of the controversy surrounding the unlicensed drug vendors. Overture says it will resume serving ads from online pharmacies some time next year after it finds an outside company
that can distinguish between legitimate and unlicensed pharmacies.
On Monday Google, which sells advertising on America Online's search service as well as its own, said it would also stop
accepting ads from unlicensed pharmacies. However, in spite of the more restrictive drug advertising policy, Google mentioned that natural searches would continue to yield results for all sites
related to a drug term.
AOL says its policy has long banned ads from unlicensed pharmacies, and any unblocked ads from AOL search pages are due to limitations in Google's ability to block them.
While the search giants are cracking down on unlicensed pharmacies, at almost the same time, they are relaxing policies on sex-related ads and earning more money from Internet searches related to
pornography in the process.
On AOL, searching for a sexual term brings up a warning that the search may produce "adult" content. The page that comes up gives the user two options: the first, in
larger type, offers to continue searching for the term using "Adult Search Fantasy Finder;" the second option allows users to continue via AOL's Google-powered search service.
Both options will
likely return highly relevant content to the user, but the search results Google provides do not contain paid listings or other advertisements that generate revenue for either AOL or Google. However,
Andrew Weinstein, spokesman for America Online, concedes that AOL does indeed receive compensation from Adult Search Fantasy Finder for sending them from the AOL search site. Exactly how much that
compensation amounts to, Weinstein wouldn't say, he added only that it amounts to a small percentage of AOL's search revenue.
According to Sex.com chief executive officer Gary Kremen, advertisers
typically pay about 10 cents per click and that a pornography search engine like Adult Search Fantasy Finder might pay a company like AOL two thirds of its revenue in return for the traffic.
Bullseye9, the name of the company that runs Adult Search Fantasy Finder, in turn charges money to pornography sites for listing them.
AOL claims that the arrangement with Bullseye9 is a "content
partnership" that provides a service to AOL users and that its policy of rejecting sex-related advertising has not changed.
Other search engines have similar links to specialized pornography
search services. Microsoft's MSN brings users searching for sex terms to NightSurf, another pornography search service. Kristen Batch, spokeswoman for Microsoft, said the company declined to discuss
its relationship with NightSurf or any aspect of its advertising for pornography.
Yahoo, which formerly had a lucrative stake in the porn advertising business, decided to limit such advertising
and eliminate all together the section in its shopping area devoted to sex videos and merchandise. However, after acquiring Overture last month, Yahoo also acquired the operations of AltaVista and
AlltheWeb, search services that have long displayed sex-related advertising. So far, Yahoo has not changed that policy.