UK Govt depts spend £6m on search engines!

What spending cuts!

"Four government departments spent almost £6m ensuring their websites appeared on search engine results pages in the last two financial years, according to newly released figures.

The Department of Health was the biggest spender, running up a bill of £4.4m in "paid search" fees.

It said the money was spent supporting campaigns on smoking and the flu pandemic.

Organisations can pay search engines to ensure their websites appear at the top of users' searches. They are often charged for each person who accesses their sites via the link.

The Department for Communities and Local Government spent over £750,000 promoting campaign websites including those for Home Information Packs, Eco Towns and Energy Performance Certificates.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change spent more than £309,000 last year. The Department of the environment, food and rural affairs (Defra) spent almost £500,000."

BBC News - Government departments spend £6m on search engines

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cheers Steve
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That's crazy.
and to think we charge around £150 a month for SEO and can pretty gaurantee the first page of google! (Depending on the business in question.)

I think our prices might take a hike up for a couple hundred thousand :P

Holy moly! Organically, you can guarantee the first page on Google? You get me to the top spot for Business Directory for £150 and I'll put a check in the post!

The govt certainly spends some serious money on search, certainly a market worth tapping into

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cheers Steve
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Like I said it depends on the business in question :O Business Directory as keywords would be amazingly hard to get to the top haha got £500,000 spare? give us a call.

Dohhh!!! Ah well, worth a try

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cheers Steve
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Part of me thinks, ye gods that's appalling.

Another part of me wants to be damn certain that when people search for "swine flu what do i do" they get the NHS advice at the top of the list and not some dodgy online pharmaceuticals sales site.

But then... and I'm sure some of you SEO bods must know this... surely the whole point of .gov.uk and .nhs.uk domain names is to be the approved, official, trusted sites? So they must be treated differently by search engines anyway, without paying for SEO?

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I agree with Mary, Governments should not need to spend money to get info which is free, the domain name should be taken into account?

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Interesting point, and agree totally. I wonder what the google gods stance is on stuff like .gov

I wonder what PR juice or link weight anchor text is coming from a .gov site! If of course you were that lucky!!

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cheers Steve
Forum Admin - teaboy and general gofer...

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