Kraft Foods was a bit surprised when they found themselves advertising on whiterevolution.com late last year. Kraft had used Google’s AdWords contextual advertising program which matches page content to keywords the advertisers select. Google offers a free search engine to website publishers which, when results are returned, AdWords advertising appears above or next to the search results.
Whiterevolution.com used this Google feature and when Milford, Connecticut freelance reporter Tom Giordano entered the search term “Halloween” on whiterevolution.com, Kraft’s text ads appeared near the results. Giordano was researching a story on the group who had distributed fliers locally.
Google, of course, forbids sites that contain pornographic, hate-related or violent content from using its search tool but the search code is freely available to all who wish to use it even if they do not conform to Google’s requirements. Upon discovery, Google has disallowed whiterevolution from using its tools.
