Look close, do you see the light blue back ground behind the Ask Sponsored Results text? Well I just had my eyes checked today and have 20/20 vision, but looking at my notebook screen from various reasonable angles the blue (or is it green?) background is next to invisible.

I believe this hidden background along with the diminutive Sponsored Results text label is likely to increase the click through rate of the sponsored listings and Ask’s income. This would be good for the advertiser since ads should be relevant and traffic still converting, but it’s a bit deceiving for the average search user and most likely hurting the organic results click through rate.

Ask does one other thing I think is a bit sneaky. The Sponsored Results text label in the upper right corner will click through to the sponsor’s site who is in the number one paid position. If you ask me, I would click on this text thinking I would get an explanation of what Sponsored Results are, not a sponsor’s site. I would not want to be charged for those clicks if I was in the number one sponsor spot. Yahoo actually does click you through to an explanation of what sponsored results are. Neither Google nor Live have their sponsored text label linked, but Live is close to doing that with the very near surrounding area clicking through to the sponsored listings.

Ask also has all open space with the sponsor background color click through to the sponsor sites. Live does this as well. To me this seems like they are trying to collect a few extra unintentional clicks. Neither Ask nor Live have the open space next to organic results click through, just the blue underlined titles. Google only has the blue underlined titles linked for sponsored and organic results, Yahoo has all sponsored text (blue underlined titles and description) as a link but only blue and underlined titles click through in the organic results.

So you tell me, do you think these tactics are a bit disingenuous?