Conservation Law Foundation » AdWords

Really, don't be evil, please . . .

Seth Kaplan — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:53:21 +0000

An earlier post on this blog pressed Google to donate money it was getting from BP for AdWords and search results around the Gulf oil catastrophe. And full disclosure that Elizabeth Stillman, who happens to be married to me, independently came up with the idea and inspired the original CLF Scoop post.

Some people think that making this request of Google is a good idea – including a certain Todd C who has launched a Facebook campaign aimed at this goal.

Taking action on this kind of thing is great – and almost as good an idea as calling your Senators and asking them where they have stood on maintaining the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and moving forward new comprehensive legislation to address our climate and energy crisis.

An open letter to Google – don't be evil, donate the money BP is paying you . . .

Seth Kaplan — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:13:09 +0000

Writers on this blog have not been the only ones to take note of BP buying “AdWords’ from Google. This PR strategy means that a search for “Gulf Oil Spill” or a related topic yields a page with a paid link from BP right at the top.

So here is a suggestion for Mr. Brin, Mr. Page, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Cerf and the rest of the leadership of Google: Announce that revenue from BP will be donated to a good cause. The options for what to do with the money are depressingly vast.

You guys decide. Give it to advocacy groups like ours who work on preventing this kind of disaster and promoting clean energy. Give it to the “Keeper” groups who are the first line of defense against the spill. Give it to a local charity on the Gulf, like the this one in New Orleans, or someone else you find. You could even just funnel it out the door as a grant to build energy efficiency or renewable energy through Google.org. Or divvy it up among these different causes.

The point is – we are all accomplices in the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico because or gasoline consumption drives forward offshore drilling, tar sands development and similar dangerous behavior but Google has a chance here to shed a little bit of that accomplice liability by giving away some of BP’s money.

And of course if Google announces it is taking this step the rest of us will feel compelled to get on our computers and use Google to search for “Gulf Oil Spill” and click on that BP ad, sending the money to a good cause – transforming Google from accomplice into a good guy, a conduit for donations.

If you agree that Google should donate it’s revenue from BP, click the “like” button below to share this message with your friends on Facebook.

The War on Words–BP Outbids Nonprofits in Oil Disaster Search Terms

Conservation Law Foundation — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:18:16 +0000

As crews battle the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, a battle of a different sort is unfolding online. It’s a war of messaging, and BP is sparing no expense.

CLF is the recipient of a monthly “Google Grant,” a free marketing program that allows non-profit organizations to reach new prospects by “bidding” on keywords that are relevant to their work and placing sponsored links in a user’s search result. So, a user searching on “renewable energy,” for example, might find a link to a CLF ad in his search results, if we were successful in bidding for those keywords.

As the oil disaster in the Gulf started to unfold, we decided to use our Google Grant to promote our extensive blog coverage on the spill, a passionate outpouring of information and insight from our advocates. It turns out, we weren’t alone.

Though a number of other nonprofit Google Grant recipients had the same idea, we were all outbid on virtually every oil spill-related keyword. By whom were we outbid? By BP.

Go ahead and perform a Google search for “Gulf Oil Spill” and pay attention to the top sponsored link. It’s BP. And the link takes users to a carefully crafted page about BP’s so-called progress. No pictures of dead marine life. No unemployed fishermen. No pelicans covered in oil.

How did BP bump out the rest of us? It’s a simple matter of economics. Google Grant recipients are only able to bid up to $1.00 for various keywords. For-profit companies, on the other hand, can bid as high as their pockets allow. BP’s generous bids ensure that their sponsored links appear first in search results. And long after nonprofit Google Grant allowances are spent, BP’s seemingly endless advertising budget continues to fuel their campaigns around the clock.

I must admit that their tactic in out-bidding everyone for keywords is ingenius – and perhaps a bit sinister. Google’s mantra to “do no evil” may have inadvertently gone awry here. The worthy non-profits the Google Grants program is intended to bolster are losing the keyword battle to big oil. But if the massive public outcry about the Gulf disaster is any indication, we may not have lost the messaging war.