Sphinn Visibility Forces Yahoo Policy Change

4th October 2007

In a blog post in July about Yahoo selling its SERPS, I pointed out that a search for Special K cereal came up with the Special K logo, any clearly paid advertisement at the top of the page.

That blog post got submitted to the new (at the time) social networking site called Sphinn, which is all content exclusively related to search engines and Internet marketing.

In addition to the 20+ people that commented on my own blog, hundreds of people likely saw the post on Sphinn, and it even elicited a comment from Matt Cutts at Google.

Now, in an apparent change of heart, Yahoo has changed their policy, and they are clearly marking these types of advertisements with the word “sponsored

Here is a screenshot today -

And here is a screenshot about two months ago -

See the green “Sponsored” notation now added?

Without the visibility and outspoken opinions of those in the Sphinn community, I seriously doubt anything would have changed…

Kudos to Yahoo and kudos to Sphinn! - Now I’m hungry for a bowl of cereal…