Previous readers will know that I’m no fan of too much government interference in business or life and I’ve always had particular issues when my tax pounds are squandered. I’ve done something daft and I’ve been driving with my car windows open and guess what? My tax disc has blown out of the car.
So off I go to my PC to research getting a new one, type into Google “tax disc” and guess what? The first organic listing is vehiclelicence.gov.uk, which gives me all of the information I need, and then above it, yes you’ve guessed it there’s an Adwords entry for direct.gov.uk.
It’s ridiculous that should I choose to click on the paid advert then some of my tax goes to the States to make Google just a little richer when all of the information is there with no cost. With our new coalition Government looking for ways to save money here’s an easy one. The ridiculous thing is that just one civil servant with an ounce of commonsense could stop this waste today.
It’s not just the search term ‘tax disc’ where our money is being thrown away. Here are some more keywords – search for ‘driving license’,'child benefit’ or ‘income support’.
Please add your own examples to the blog. What can be done to stop this lunacy?
Martin Blain
I completely see where you’re coming from on this issue. However, just to play devils avocate, what would happen if the governments official website wasn’t the the first organic listing? You would think that people would still look for the .gov suffix or would be able to sniff out a hoax site but, as I’m coming to learn, common sense isn’t all that common sometimes. Plus it could make things difficult for those who are less technologically minded. Potentially hoax or non-official sites that seed high in a search could dilute the governments work, which in turn could cost more money…
The direct.gov.uk website has approximately 21,000 Google Pay Per Click Adwords ads pointing towards it. An example search term is ‘retirement benefits’ which has about 50,000 searches per month. It costs us, the taxpayer, £1.97 each time someone clicks on the Adwords advertisment. You can do the maths yourself…
Sarah,
I agree with you that, where there is a problem finding the official government website using the search engine’s organic listings, there is a to use Adwords to assist searchers. My big beef is when the government department spends money on ads when the main website is easy to find anyway.
Bearing in mind all those Tory promises about cutting waste why is this criminal waste of time still going on?
We are all forgetting something very important here. If the government don’t spend on these adwords then any attacker could, as we have seen in recent reports in the media, even after reported it can take months for Google to remove the adwords. If this were to happen then a large section of the general public who choose not to use their common sense may end up becoming victims to phishing attacks. By the government paying for these adwords they are effectively stopping attackers from taking advantage of the adwords system.
Tom,
Whilst I agree that inexperienced users of the internet can be taken advantage of I don’t see it as a reason to justify government wasting money on Google’s adwords.
As an example search for “redundancy”, the organic searches will bring you the fabulous ACAS advisory site for free and then BusinessLink is using a paid for advert to provide much the same advice. Businesslink is effectively throwng tax payers money down the drain by “competing” with the main governmental advice service.
Can somebody explain the wisdom behind Businesslink’s actions?
I agree that in scenarios such as the one you mentioned, spending tax payer’s money on AdWords is not necessary. However there are also other examples where I think it is necessary; one example could be the DVLA website.
On the DVLA website you can sign up for a driver’s license, this requires you to enter a lot of personal information. It would be beyond easy for an attacker to set up a website which is identical to the DVLA’s in every way except when your personal information is entered it would be freely available to the attacker. The attacker could then set up the AdWords and fool inexperienced computer users into providing their information.
Can anybody explain the Wisdom behind any of the decisions made by the government in regards to technology and the internet?