Tories to buy up Budget keywords on Google

by Daniel Farey-Jones, Brand Republic 22-Apr-09, 09:00

LONDON - The Conservatives will be buying Budget-related Google keywords today in an attempt to grab the spotlight from Chancellor Alastair Darling on his big day.

The party has used the strategy before when there was pressure on Gordon Brown in March to apologise for his economic record.

It bought the term "Gordon Brown" with a link which sent people to a website called Sorryfromgordon.com.

According to a party spokeswoman, today's tactics will involve buying key phrases from Chancellor Darling's speech to the House of Commons, scheduled to begin at 12.30pm.

The Google ads will link users to the party website, Conservatives.com.

The Telegraph's Budget 2009 Twitterfall

The Tory's hijack plans follow the Daily Telegraph's efforts yesterday to aggregate Tweets on Twitter for today's Budget.

The paper set out to stream any Tweet that included #budget tag on to a section called "Budget 2009 Twitterfall" on its Budget page.

Its efforts were, however, thwarted as Twitter users began inappropriately tagging their tweets to sink the Telegraph's efforts.

These included posts such as "Even the Indie is better than this drivel #Budget" and "Is tempted to use #budget to goatse the Torygraph, but is at work".

The Telegraph has since withdrawn its Budget 2009 Twitterfall, but more examples of Twitter users' successful attempts at sabotage can be seen on the FT's Alphaville blog.

Comments

Chris Pullon - 22/04/2009

Personally I'm enjoying wasting their money by clicking on the link. I'm finding 'New Budget' as the best way to see their keywords. They need to up those bids though, I can't see them at all on the top 2 positions.