A recent search on “abortion” on the “new” Amazon.com shows books for and against abortion. That makes sense if their system is bringing up products that have “abortion” in their descriptive text.

BUT on this search Amazon also offers “PRO LIFE” bracelets, and the descriptive text for these bracelets don’t even mention the word “abortion”.

Does Amazon allow their advertisers to associate their products with search terms that may not appear in their descriptions?

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Reminds me of the stories about how inappropiate contextual advertising would occasionally appear next to news stories (I’m thinking of the case about a year ago in the New York Times when there was a grusome murder and some one was discovered packed in a suitcase – meanwhile a contextual ad for “sports luggage” appeared next to the story. It was quickly noticed and corrected – but no one deliberately set that up….it just happened.

Like you say, it’s an editorial decision how it’s handled – since some people want to be offended by this kind of thing – it makes sense to accomodate them up to a point. As long as they leave out that part with Amazon being Anti Choice or Pro Choice – Amazon probably had no position .