PC World reports on a study that shows surfers — even experienced ones — still have trouble telling the difference between free and paid-for-listings. In search engines like Google, AOL and Hotbot, I think the words: “sponsored links” and the tiny separate table along the right might be a good hint. In Yahoo they use the enigmatic word “Advertising”. MSN does make it a little more tricky by putting sponsor links either at the very top, graphically along the right or at the bottom beneath the search results. Ask Jeeves and he’ll tell you “Sponsored Web Links” is in a separate table above the web results. What about Overture? They include the sponsors with the results but still put sponsored links in parenthesis. Maybe in this study they found experienced surfers who don’t know what these words mean? I don’t get it.