Ghost Sites of the Web

Web 1.0 history, forgotten web celebrities, old web sites, commentary, and news by Steve Baldwin. Published erratically since 1996.

July 03, 2007

Yahoo SmartAds or Yahoo SmartAsses?

Google SmartAds SERP, July 3, 2007

I was working on an article today on Yahoo SmartAds, which is the name given to Yahoo's latest attempt to make graphical display advertising (otherwise known as junky, irrelevant, low-rent banner ads) as smart as text-based search advertising. So naturally, I went to Google and typed in "SmartAds" and Google wisely served up the page you see above with the suggestion that I was looking for Smartass, not SmartAds.

I'm not cynical enough to believe that somebody at Google saw all that traffic coming to Google after Yahoo announced SmartAds last Sunday and manually added this snarky suggestion. I can only conclude that the Google algorithm is developing a wicked sense of humor!

I thought that Yahoo would dispense with any Google-style "smartass" SERP humor and give me the straight dope on SmartAds, so I went there and typed in "SmartAds." But the Yahoo SERP yielded no trace of Yahoo's SmartAds (although it included results for a Canadian design company called "SmartAds," a site called "SmartAds.info," and a site called "SmartAds.uk" (see screenshot below).

It turns out that the Smartasses at Yahoo had buried the SmartAds press release deep within the "About" area of Yahoo, a section that's evidently never been visited by Yahoo's search spider.

If this is cutting-edge technology, I'm a pretzel. (A tip for Yahoo - why not run an iddy biddy paid search ad for "SmartAds" on this SERP? It wouldn't cost you a dime to do so!)

Yahoo SmartAds SERP, July 3, 2007

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