Public purse used to keep Google honest

Public bodies are having to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds every year to prevent scams from dominating Google’s search results, a PC Pro investigation has found.

Companies have previously complained that they feel obliged to buy advertising to avoid their brand being pushed below rivals that use their company’s name in search terms. Now official public bodies are falling into the same trap.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK’s regulator charged with protecting consumers from financial fraud, says it feels compelled to pay Google to run adverts to counter ads from scammers that appear above “organic” search results.

“It’s a massive problem the way the scammers are able to pay Google to get top place on a search for important keywords in a regulated industry, jumping ahead of legal comparison sites and