The MPs’ expenses scandal has been rumbling on for what seems like weeks now. And whilst MPs hang their heads in shame, and commentators lament the corruption of our elected representatives, research from Hitwise UK shows that the news is having a big impact on what we’re searching for.

The graph below shows the growth in searches for a group of keywords related to the story. These have increased by 575%, and all indications are that there is more growth to come.

Most of the expenses related search terms are general. Further down the list however you can find the names of specific Mps, and of course ‘expenses keywords’ used in conjunction with ‘Telegraph’

Given his relatively minor expenses story, its perhaps surprising that Gordon Brown is the most frequently mentioned MP, followed by Barbara Follett.

The data is of course slightly old by now – we will update the story if it radically changes.

Here are the top search terms:

1. mps expenses (21.7% of all searches) for terms in the MPs’ Expenses portfolio)
2. mp expenses (14.4%)
3. mp’s expenses (5.2%)
4. mp expenses list (4.3%)
5. mps expenses list (2.6%)
6. gordon brown expenses (2.1%)
7. barbara follett expenses (1.9%)
8. telegraph expenses (1.7%)
9. ministers expenses (1.7%)
10. mps’ expenses (1.65)

Whilst it is MPs who are rightly paying the price for their transgressions, the website of The Telegraph is the main beneficiary.

Last week telegraph.co.uk picked up over 30% of all clicks in the organic search results for expenses related search queries. Other winners were Google News UK, followed by political site TheyWorkForYou.com. All the rest of the top 10 were all news media sites.

Here’s what happened to telegraph.co.uk’s market share of News related Internet traffic:

Hitwise also point out that not only has visits to telepgraph.co.uk gone up, average time on site has increased from 8 to 9 minutes. So people are going more frequently to the website, and they like what they find there. All increasing the telegraph.co.uk’s advertising revenue.

And of course, if people spend more time on the site, they’re probably looking at more pages. Here’s a graph of the telegraph’s page views:

Has the scandal shaped what you’ve searched for? Are you a new convert to telegraph.co.uk? Are you trying to grab some search traffic by using the website builder to add MPs expenses keywords onto your site? Or have you had enough of the whole episode! Leave us a comment below.

Anyone who has been following our Search Engine Optimisation guide (SEO) will know that one of the most important things to decide before you start building a website is which keywords you’re going to focus on. Choosing keywords that are both relevant to your website, and that are also being used frequently on search engines, will decide how much potential traffic those search engines are going to send to your website.

So if choosing certain keywords plays a roll in how much traffic your website gets, do some website builders and publishers only choose those keywords that can in fact bring lots of traffic? Undoubtedly so, and there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the keywords are highly relevant to what the web page is all about. But what if you’re a news organisation? Do you choose stories – and keywords – to write about simply because they will get visitors onto your site, rather than them being genuinely in the news?

This was the charge levied at thetelegraph.co.uk in a recent article in satirical news magazine Private eye. It was claimed that stories on the telegraph website were being chosen simply for keyword popularity, in order to drive more traffic onto the website. Moreover, the article suggested that reporters were required to stuff as many keywords as possible into the opening paragraph, to improve the chances of that article ranking more highly, and therefore getting more traffic. The text from Private Eye reads: “Telegraph news hacks are sent a memo three or four times a day listing the top subjects being searched in the last few hours on Google. They are then expected to write stories accordingly and/or get as many of those keywords as possible into the first part of their story”.

We recently discussed how theguardian.co.uk tried keyword stuffing – with a particularly ‘fruity’ theme – to whether it is possible to trick Google into boosting some football pages onto the first page for less seemly search terms. And it worked. But surely a large and respected news organisation such as the telegraph must report the actual news, as objectively as possible, rather than allow user searches to define what makes it into the news, mustn’t they?

Shane Richmond, the communities editor attempted to dismiss the story by responding: “Normally I’d chuckle and move on, but the Private Eye item seems to have caused a little confusion, which I want to dispel”.

The Telegraph, apparently, does push their reporters towards using certain keywords, but this is to help readers to find stories, rather than the other way around, whereby stories are written so that they fall into the path of the searching public.

“So yes, of course, that’s what we do and our staff are regularly updated on the performance of our stories in search engines and told when a vital key word is missing”, continued Richmond.

But he also strongly contested that specific keywords were compulsory, and nor were keywords playing a role in what made it into the news.

It all sounds like quite a fine line, and illustrates how ‘the news’ is a two way dialogue between broadcasters and consumers. Anyone relaying the news must always shape their stories to their audience. That, for example, is why a huge event in a distant land appears as the fourth item on the news whilst a UK celebrity choosing to adopt a baby can make it into top spot. There is most clearly describes the symbiotic relationship between reader and writer, between news giver and news receiver.

Of course bloggers have always known that if they have any hope of attracting new readers from the search engines then they have to lay down stories that have a chance of appearing highly on some high traffic keywords.

So, news receiver, lets swap roles. What do you think? Your feedback is always appreciated – show me how symbiotic we are by leaving a comment below!