After yielding to pressure from conservative groups for carrying porn ads on its paid search service, Yahoo! removed all traces of blue content from its sites in 2001, including banner ads and porn-related products, as part of an anti-Internet-porn stance. Yahoo! also eliminated adult entertainment listings from its directory service.
Around the same time Yahoo! nixed its involvement with porn advertorial content, the popular portal attempted to launch an adult shopping category on its network, but eventually pulled that too, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
But just a few months after its $1.8 billion purchase of paid search service Overture, Yahoo! has changed its mind and officially opened the floodgates to the adult world and the bounty of advertiser dollars adult companies bring to the table.
XBiz spoke with several representatives for Yahoo! and none were able to comment on Yahoo!'s decision to re-introduce porn advertisers into its network.
In keeping with statistics that point to the fact that the three most frequently used search word entries are "porn," "XXX," "and "sex," both Google and Overture have known for years now that porn advertising equals big dollars. And now, despite its prior leanings toward keeping its network family-friendly, Yahoo! is getting smart and following the money trail back to the porn industry.
Under Yahoo!'s new advertiser policy, porn ads will only be featured on search engines AltaVista and AlltheWeb.com. Both sites were included in the Overture purchase.
Prior to being acquired by Yahoo!, Overture, much like staunch competitor Google, brought in significant revenue from its advertorial dalliances with the porn industry. In October of this year, Google took a slam from several gun sellers over its company policy to feature porn ad content but not ads for the legal sale of guns.
A Google search for words related to "porn" typically yields 95 pages of adult sites that are accompanied by paid porn-related advertisements in the right hand column. A search for guns yields many pages of search results, but none of those pages have paid advertisements.
At the time, Google would not talk to XBiz about its advertising policy and stood by its original decision.
"As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site," Google said in a statement. Google further stated that it does not edit the content on its search engine, but that it reserves the right as a privately held company to determine who its advertisers are.
Even America's favorite auction site eBay has acquiesced to America's craving for porn and now features an adult products category and various listings regarding pornography when typed into its search category. Although the eBay adult site requires credit card information before the site can be accessed.
In another major decision this week, Yahoo! announced plans to ad a pop-up blocker to the latest version of its browser toolbar.
According to reports, Yahoo!'s decision is an attempt to more closely align itself with search engine competitor Google and could contribute to the extinction of the pop-up ad as one of the Internet's highly favored modes of online advertising, but also one of Internet users most dreaded online annoyances.