News broke last week that the British Broadcasting Corporation had been ‘paying’ Google for search engine rankings. The original article was released by the Daily Mail that grossly misdirected readers into believing that Google had paid for natural, organic traffic upgrades, which isn’t possible no matter how large your corporation or how much money you have to throw at your marketing. This lead to a lot of confusion in blogs and other sources that syndicated the content with the BBC being accused of fraud.
What the Mail on Sunday neglected to mention was the Google was in fact paying for advertised space like the millions of other companies around the world that use the Google adword service which provides ‘sponsored’ links to targeted keywords. The sensationalist reporting from the Mail on Sunday stated:
“The BBC paid Google so that people looking up details of the Mercury Prize, for instance, would be directed to a BBC website.”
Which while not entirely untrue, is a good example of terrible reporting, or at the very least a complete lack of understanding about how advertising on the internet works. In fact, all the company were doing was using its marketing budget to pay for links on Google. We’d have hoped the mainstream media where smart enough to learn the difference between SEO and PPC, but apparently we still have some way to go yet.
The issues has raised some blogs to question if the BBC should be spending taxpayers money on Google adverts but we’re not sure if anyone would complain if they used more traditional methods of advertising. The BBC answered claims about their marketing strategy after the story broke:
“Promoting content like the Mercury Prize online is an effective way to inform the licence fee payers who will want to watch it or read about it. The BBC has an annual budget for marketing and value for money is at the heart of how decisions are made about spending it”
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