Awkward Ads in CNN.com Steroid Searches

Yesterday’s big steroid announcement and press conference probably drew many people to the web to find out more about the story. If you checked out CNN.com, you may have been in for a surprise flock of ads accompanying your searches — websites to buy steroids.

Techcrunch.com has the story of CNN.com’s search engine, which is powered by Google and thus puts out automated Google ads related to the search. If a person typed “steroids” into the CNN.com search engine yesterday looking for news on the steroid scandal, they were hit with ads saying “buy extreme anabolics now” and “buy hardcore cycles.”

Foxnews.com also has ads generated by the search terms, but does not show any sites to buy steroids. MSNBC.com does not have search-generated advertisements.

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