550Access Free Toolbar compels Search Engines to clean up their act

The new free toolbar 3.0 offered by 550Access magnifies the scope of online ad blocking and exposes vulnerabilities in search engines business model.

(PRWEB) March 11, 2004 -- 550Access, a nationwide internet services provider, announced today the release of its latest Toolbar version 3.0, now available at http://toolbar.550access.com. The highlight feature of this version is the Precision Search that expands the scope of online ad-blocking to search engines and exposes the vulnerability in search engines business model.

Precision Search blocks sponsored ads in search engine results and suppresses online banner ads. Blocking of such ads presents a cleaner, uncluttered look of web pages and improves surfing speeds.

A major portion of Search Engine revenues comes from paid placement ads. Paid placement ads represent banners and other ads (often identified as Sponsored Links) that exist on a search engine page. These include vertical sidebar ads outside the editorial space or highlighted text ads placed on top within the editorial space.

Such prominent placements help advertisers attract more traffic to their website but are often a source of confusion for users since first of all they clutter up the screen and secondly these sponsored links are often not the most relevant links for a users query.

By blocking paid placement ads, Precision Search gives users more relevant results for their search query within a cleaner screen space. Most importantly, removal of search ads increases the search results relevancy and protects users against inefficiencies resulting from search engines commercialism. This, in turn, compels search engines to evolve more user-friendly strategies that also uphold credibility of their search services.

According to Vivek Dave, President of 550Access, Consumers should have control on what they choose to see and what they do not because it is the consumer who owns the desktop."

Users of the Toolbar 3.0 have the option to deactivate Precision Search at any time. Besides Precision Search, 550 Access Toolbar 3.0 continues to offer the functionality of Toolbar 2.0, a prior version, which got highest ratings on Download.com.

Toolbar 3.0 also includes tools for popup blocking, autofill, instant search and online privacy, and is available for free at http://toolbar.550access.com.

About the Company

550Access is a leader in budget ISP market and offers lowest priced regular and high speed dialup services for $5.50 and $7.95 respectively, to customers nationwide. 550Access also offers a complete dialup solution to corporate customers for $5.25 per month per account

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