Meta-search engine site Cyber411 marked its
first anniversary of refusing to run pornographic advertising banners.
The site’s creator, Cyber Networks Inc., observed the anniversary by inviting
other Web sites to follow its example and ban adult services ad banners.
“Admittedly, we did not always have this smut-free policy,” said Mark Galione,
vice president for sales and marketing at Cyber Networks. “When Cyber411 first
ramped up, we had over a half-million dollars in advertising contracts related
to adult services banner ads. But almost immediately, our customers raised
complaints. And quite frankly, they were correct–Cyber411 is used by
corporations and families and it was inappropriate to have smutty banner ads
on our site.”
“Whatever money may have been lost in cancelling these ads was more than
compensated by the goodwill generated with our loyal customers, who were very
pleased that we took their suggestions to heart,” said Galione.
Several other sites have recently adopted a similar policy, including
Infoseek.
“We are not talking about censorship, nor do we wish to curtail anyone’s
enjoyment of cyberspace,” Galione said. “But we urge our friends in this
industry to stop and think about whether it is appropriate to present adult
advertising in a medium which is heavily frequented by children and teenagers,
and whether it is appropriate to assault business professionals using the
Internet for corporate research with dubious banner advertising. There is a
place in cyberspace for this kind of material, but that place is not on Web
sites which are relied upon by business executives and young people.”
Cyber411 is a parallel meta-engine that simultaneously harnesses 16 of the top
search engines on a single query. As the results are gathered, all duplicate
URLs are automatically removed. Searches can be set to fit a specific time
frame (i.e., within 30 seconds or 60 seconds). The 16 search engines employed
in the Cyber411 search are AltaVista, DejaNews, Excite, Galaxy, GoTo, HotBot,
LookSmart, Lycos, Magellan, Northern Light, PlanetSearch, search.com,
Thunderstone, WebCrawler, What-U-Seek and Yahoo.
