Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Real food?

Yesterday, I saw a television ad for Hellman's Mayonnaise, insisting that this was "real food" in contrast to many other food products on the market that feature artificial ingredients. (The ad did not mention anything about the fat content of the featured product). The ad encouraged the viewer to search with the words "real food" on Yahoo! [No exclamation was intended, but the point is part of the search engine name].

When I searched as instructed, the first item that came up was a "Yahoo! shortcut." The following explanation was given: "A Yahoo! Shortcut is a quick way to get to the information you want. A Yahoo! Shortcut automatically appears when it is relevant to your search and can contain links to useful content from Yahoo!, its partners, or across the web. Some of the content may come from partners who pay to be included in Yahoo! or have another financial relationship with Yahoo!" [Emphasis added]

On Google, in contrast, a vegetarian restaurant with that domain name comes up when a search is done on "real food."

On Google, when one searches for "virtual food," the first site listed is a "virtual gift store."

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