Extra! Extra! Newspapers pay more for search results
Online newspapers have figured out one way to get more people to read news at their sites – instead of at the sites of their competitors. They outbid them for Internet search words for a big story.
The recent shootings at Virginia Tech demonstrated the active effort by many papers to pay the highest click rates for search terms related to that tragedy.
That effort doesn’t change the list of top 10 blue links that a search turns up for any search phrase.
Bidding affects the results in the “sponsored links” that appear on top and to the right of the actual search results.
When searchers click on the sponsored links, the sponsoring company that paid for that link ends up paying a small fee to Google.
The amount varies and is determined by how high each sponsor sets a bid price.
In addition to the Virginia Tech shootings, recent searches using “Iraq war,” “Don Imus” or “Apple” provided direct paid links to the New York Times Web site.
Murray Gaylord, vice president of marketing for NYtimes.com, said the practice is just an evolution in industry practices.
“In the old days … there used to be people standing on corners yelling, ‘Extra! Extra! Read all about it!’,” said Gaylord.
Today it’s done through aggressive placement of a company’s paid links in the search engine results page, he said.
A Wall Street Journal article noted how prices change during a news event. The day of the Virginia Tech shootings, the cost per click for a search phrase such as “Virginia Tech” cost about $5 at its highest. The next week, the price fell to six cents per click.
Woman who was denied teaching degree sues school
A Pennsylvania woman who was denied a teaching degree on the eve of graduation because of a MySpace photo has sued the university.
Millersville University instead granted Stacy Snyder a degree in English last year after learning of her Web-published picture, which bore the caption “Drunken Pirate.”
Snyder learned the day before graduation that she would not be awarded an education degree or teaching certificate.
“I dreamed about being a teacher for a long time,” said Snyder, 27, who now works as a nanny. The photo, taken at a 2005 Halloween party, shows Snyder wearing a pirate hat while drinking from a plastic cup. It was posted on her own MySpace site.