The FTC Wants To Keep Bloggers Honest

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Comments (2)

Here’s a potential time bomb of legislation that could have search engine optimization side effects. The FTC is considering regulating bloggers and social media marketers? And, by virtue of association, SEOs.

The obvious question here is, What if a false statement achieves high rankings in the search engines? If the FTC oversees bloggers and social media marketers for the purpose of ensuring that they don’t make false or misleading comments about the products they are promoting then that could have some detrimental effects on SEO. After all, social media marketers and bloggers use SEO to promote their web properties. Will this then lead to the FTC regulating SEO?

I like what Les (quoted by WebProNews) has to say:

The next question is what will the FTC do to those bloggers that do write paid reviews? Will they prosecute and turn them into criminals? That is fine if you are based in the US. What if your based in Britain, Europe or Australia – will the law cross borders?

That’s a good question. Will the FTC stretch the boundaries of its authority to worldwide just so it can make sure bloggers don’t misrepresent the products they promote? If this happens will Google eventually be forced to de-list blogs and social media sites that are found guilty of misleading readers about certain products? These huge, HUGE issues.

Comments (2) Category: Social & Viral Marketing

Read similar posts in Social & Viral Marketing

2 Comments

Comment by Rory

Made Wednesday, 15 of April , 2009 at 7:35 am

This just seems like speculation to me. First off, online advertising is already under the review and enforcement of the FTC. I think that bloggers being turned into criminals is just hype. If there is one thing true about SEO, it is that change is constant. As an industry, SEOs are forced to embrace change more quickly than other sectors of online ore traditional marketing.

Until there is an actual problem, (like some mass of complaints to the FTC about blogs) nothing is likely to change. If something like that does happen, everyone will adapt. Just like they had to adapt and not rip-off copyrighted images.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Wednesday, 15 of April , 2009 at 8:50 am

@Rory – Thanks for your comments…it should be very interesting to see how this unfolds in the future.