As I commented last month, the digital team at Guardian News and Media seems to be desperate to hold on to its recently regained crown as the No 1 newspaper website in the UK. There is no phrase too sensitive, no taste that is too poor … apparently. Now GMG has bought the keywords “Madeleine McCann” from Google.
The Guardian has bought the key phrase "Madeleine McCann"
Even though it repeatedly denounced the Telegraph’s perfectly legitimate search engine optimisation strategy back in May after telegraph.co.uk had risen to No.1, that distaste for what is not decent journalism doesn’t extend … apparently … to its marketing department. Or perhaps search engine marketing at GNM isn’t just the domain of the marketing department - last month GNM’s digital head, Emily Bell, was quoted on her own website explaining how the newsdesk has involvement in SEM:
‘Also in the past two months, we have started to combine search engine optimisation - talking to the news desk on the paper about SEO-friendly headlines and underlining SEO with our subs desk [on the website] - with our marketing and pay-per-click activity’
That pay-per-click activity now extends to buying the phrase “Madeleine McCann”, something that even The Sun has stopped doing after being roundly condemned for poor taste in its dash for unique users.
Hmm.. I don’t have any inside knowledge about who’s buying words or why.
Remind me, though - which national papers didn’t make any payouts to the McCanns or Robert Murat?
[...] a good spot from CounterValue on how the Guardian is using PPC and [...]
[...] paper’s purchase of the words Madeleine McCann was criticised by Justin Williams, assistant editor at Telegraph Media Group, on his personal blog, who said the practice showed the paper was ‘desperate’ to hold onto its position as [...]
The fault, if any, lies not with the Guardian, for purchasing the keywords, but with Google, for selling them.
Should such an unhappy case occur again, perhaps Google could donate the keywords to a suitable “lost-children” appeal website?
[...] to the CounterValue blog, written by Justin Williams, assistant-editor of the Telegraph Media Group, the Guardian showed [...]
To be honest I’d rather read Madeline McCann news in the Guardian than the hot whipped media frenzy that other papers indulge in. I don’t see any fault here, are we supposed to rely on Googles natural search to provide a blanced viewpoint in its top 10 results? The amount of print the tabloids poured into the story its no wonder Google will think they know the most about the story (top 5 includes Daily Mail and NewsOfTheWorld) when I would contest they printed any old rumours to sell papers.
[...] to the CounterValue blog, written by Justin Williams, assistant-editor of the Telegraph Media Group, the Guardian showed [...]
[...] figure came from paid searches - those sponsored links and keywords that the Guardian is buying. Remember Madeleine McCann that the Guardian bought “in error“? Well, it seems that they are doing this in multiples of 100 every [...]