Council targets search engines to drive e-democracy take-up
Bristol City Council has become the first local authority in the UK to use pay-per-click advertising to generate more web traffic, eGov monitor can report.
The council last week began a search engine marketing campaign to tempt visitors to join its latest e-democracy initiative, AskBristol.com.
The site is being advertised via sponsored search results on paid-for-listing providers Google and Yahoo Search Marketing.
The Council has bid for keywords such as "Bristol", "edemocracy" and "citizens panel", so when a search query matches one of the terms, a short text advert for AskBristol.com is displayed.
The paid-for placements appear on Google and Yahoo's advertising networks, which include Ask Jeeves, MSN UK and Wanadoo.
The Cabinet Office launched a similar marketing campaign last year to promote its Directgov citizen portal.
AskBristol.com, launched in January, is one of a series of pilot projects being run under the Government's £4 million Local e-Democracy National Project.
The website is aimed at giving Bristol residents the chance to have their say on local issues through online discussions and interactive citizens' panels.
Carol Hayward, Bristol's project manager for local e-democracy, told eGov monitor that the Council hoped that the online marketing campaign, which is due to run for three months, would build upon existing efforts to promote the AskBristol website locally.
"We felt that we'd come to the point where we wanted to reach out to a wider audience than was possible through outreach in the city such as face to face and word of mouth promotion", Carol said. "We hope that this approach will help to signpost more people who have an interest in the city to our website, whether they live or work here or not."
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