Angry in the Great White North

If you go to the top right of any page at Angry in the Great White North, you'll see a Google search box.

Type in "chuck cadman" and you'll see pages in this blog that feature the search terms "chuck cadman".

You'll also get one paid ad from the Toronto Star (click on the screenshot to enlarge it):

For people who aren't familiar with the way Google AdWords works, what has happened is that the Toronto Star has bid on the phrase "chuck cadman".  If someone enters that in a Google search box, Google will check all bids for that phrase and serve up the top three.

Right now it appears that the Toronto Star is the only account bidding.

If anyone clicks on the link "Tory Bribe Scandal", they are taken to the Toronto Star story from yesterday, "Cadman 'bribe' furor grips Tories".  The click also earns Google the bid offered by the Toronto Star.  A portion of the money paid by the Toronto Star to Google is then shared with the owner of the page that hosted the Google link in the first place -- that would be me.

It is an interesting move by the Toronto Star.  First of all, the paper is moving quickly, trying to establish itself as the authoritative news source for this story.  The reader is promised "all the details" at the top of the Google search results page.  Other news organizations with an online presence are depending on established or organic traffic to draw in readers.  The Star is putting its own money on the line to get its story out by bidding on "chuck cadman" and presumably many other similar terms.

The amount of money paid out by the Star is likely to be small since clearly no one else is bidding right now.

The Star also gets to put a bit of editorial spin outside the boundaries of its own website.  Type "chuck cadman" and you get "Tory Bribe Scandal" as a result.  Nothing about the vague nature of the allegations, nor are the single quotes around the word 'bribe' that appear in the actual Toronto Star headline used in the AdWords title.

Even the word "scandal" doesn't appear in the title or the body text of the page to which the reader is sent.  I wonder if readers might be disappointed.  The word "scandal" does appear in the anchor text of a sidebar link to a Thomas Walkom column, which ironically warns everyone that using the word "scandal" is premature, since most of these things never turn out to be as bad as they might first appear.

Then AdWords is not about news, but about advertising.  The Toronto Star is advertising itself as the place to be for people wanting to learn more about the Tory Bribe Scandal, and currently owns those words (yes, if you type "tory bribe scandal" in a Google search bar, you get the same paid link).  That the the Toronto Star itself is being very careful about using words like "scandal" and "bribe" on its own pages seems ironic.