New Guidelines for Questionable Products

Things to avoid if you don’t like “no” for an answer

As you may already know, we don’t accept ads for certain types of content. Recently, we have added a few categories of unacceptable content to our guidelines. They include: 

• Cigarettes—Sure, James Dean looks cool smoking in that “Rebel Without A Cause” movie poster, but in our search listings we will not accept ads that sell, facilitate the sale, or promote the sale of cigarettes.
• Essay-Writing Services—School is hard, writing papers is a drag, but going through life never learning a thing is even more painful. We no longer accept ads that promote academic paper-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses and dissertations. 
•  Fake IDs and Fake Diplomas—These days lots of things can be fake—nails, lips, other body parts…. But we have to draw the line at fake IDs or credentials. For that reason, we will not accept ads that offer fake IDs, diplomas or educational transcripts.
• Firearms, Ammunition and Fireworks—Go blow ‘em up and shoot ‘em up somewhere else, because we will not accept ads that offer or promote the sale of fireworks, firearms or integral parts for these weapons.

Quality web pages
Speaking of websites, we are also big believers in quality over quantity; therefore, we’ve recently added a few additional quality guidelines. These apply to web pages that are created deliberately to trick the search engine into offering inappropriate, redundant or poor-quality search results. The new guidelines include prohibitions against:

• Pages that change browser preferences without permission (such as resetting the default home page or resizing browser windows).
• Pages offering or promoting bulk marketing products or services if the stated or implied use of the product is unsolicited spam email.
• Pages designed to artificially inflate search ranking (such as encoding meta tags or hidden keywords).

As always, our ultimate goal is to offer relevant results that provide the ultimate search experience and user satisfaction—and that’s why sometimes we turn away ad dollars.

Visit here for more information on Yahoo’s Editorial Guidelines.

— Kastle Waserman, Communications Manager, Customer Solutions

Photo by Paul Thomas via Flickr