February 17, 2004

Some news organizations look to lure readers through paid search ads on hot news stories, from Michael Jackson's trial to Comcast's bid to buy Disney.

British Broadcasting Corp. has been a leader in this effort, buying Google ads on a range of news-related searches. Late last month, it bought its first paid listings on searches related to the Hutton Inquiry, which investigated a BBC report that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair embellished intelligence on Iraq to justify the war.

Google searches on topics such as Michael Jackson and the Manchester United soccer team also turn up links to BBC's coverage.

Other news organizations are following suit. The Financial Times is using Google's ad program to drive users to its special coverage of Comcast's hostile bid for Disney. The Wall Street Journal has Google ads tied to ImClone searches.

Smaller publications have used paid listings to capitalize on hot news topics. Covers.com, a Canadian sports news Web site, has Google paid listings for Kobe Bryant searches.

Google does not display its paid links on Google News. A Google spokesman said the search engine has no plans to add paid listings to the site, which is still in test mode.

Source: DM News

Read Serge Thibodeau's daily blogs on search engines at Serge Thibodeau Live. We strongly suggest you bookmark our web site by clicking here.

Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it.

Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

You can link to the Rank for Sales web site as much as you like. Read our section on how your company can participate in our reciprocal link exchange program and increase your rankings in all the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo and all the others.