Search engine rankings news - BBC paying Google for top search positions

23 November 2009

Google is being paid by the BBC to improve search engine rankings for various search terms - key words and keyphrases - and to ensure the news and entertainment corporation features highly for a range of issues and topics.

For the BBC to be paying for top positions in search engines appears to be troubling the commercial interests of other media.

In publications such as the Mail on Sunday, it is being argued the BBC is abusing its powerful position in the UK where it generates £3.5 billion of television license fees rather than generate revenue and profits via the more familiar capitalist-style, private enterprise, business models.

The TV licence is basically a tax on British citizens for owning a television. Commercial competitors such as Sky face an uphill struggle to generate revenue and must offer good quality television better than or comparable to the BBC or face losing customers.

As a result rivals such as Sky are complaining about the BBC's government-backed position as a media giant with a revenue generating model that disadvantages normal commercial media and entertainment organisations.

Mark Chapman, E-business Marketing Manager at Fuse - a Chichester, Manchester and London-based SEO firm - said this was an interesting development which required monitoring.

"For an impartial service like the BBC to try to improve search engine rankings for news subjects could be considered controversial. It is possible the BBC might be abusing its licence fee and paying to manipulate certain news to a more visible place on the search engines," he said.