Search Ads

I decided to write about this topic because recently I heard an episode of the podcast “Reply All” where someone lost their camera in a taxi in New York City and the website that they found through a Google search said that they would help them recover their item for $47. The website was misleading, it doesn’t do much to help. here are a lot of other websites that mislead consumers into thinking that they are official or legitimate but in the fine print they explain that they are not official or affiliated with the legit company or government entity.. To hear all the examples and an in-depth discussion you can listen here: https://gimletmedia.com/episode/76-lost-in-a-cab/

One of the things that I have seen occur in the library is that patrons will accidentally navigate to websites that charge them for services that are not necessary, or collect personal information to sell to advertisers. When people search for something on Google, Yahoo, or Bing many times they often mistake the websites listed as ads for non-profits, government, or free services. Unfortunately, the disclaimers on the search websites can be small and not easily noticed.

I have two examples below based on recent patron interactions. One patron searched for “McDonald’s application” and they used a website that gave their website to marketing companies that sent them spam to their e-mail address and phone calls trying to sell services. You can tell from the examples where the arrows are red are for websites that are not connected to McDonald’s. The word ad is listed to the side but it is small. Sometimes there is a disclaimer. This seems misleading at best and a scam at its worst. You can see the correct website with a green arrow beside it. When you are searching on mobile it can be harder to tell which ones are advertisements.

The other example was a patron that was searching for a way to “create a resume”. As you can see in the examples below have web addresses that end in “.COM” this denotes company, and they all have “Ad” in front of the web address. What I noticed is that people will mistake the website for a free resume creation tool but when someone wants to print or download the website requires that they pay. In a lot of cases the peron spent hours working on a resume and are now held hostage or have to start all over.

When you are searching for a government website try to make sure that it ends in ”.GOV” or that it is the “official website” of a federal, state, or local government. For instance if you are looking for a tax form you want to make sure that the web address begins with https://www.irs.gov . I have seen websites for the most common searches related to government such as grants, unclaimed property, government auctions, etc. that direct people to websites asking you to pay for forms, help, or searching services. Please double check the web address and try to notice when searching whether there is any indication that this could possibly be an “ad” or “sponsored site”.

When in doubt… ask a librarian!

Also there have been two scams where people claim to be from the IRS or Microsoft. These are scam! Neither will ever call and claim that you owe them money.