The BBC has begun a three-month experiment with a new sports widget of gossip leading up to the U.K. football transfer deadline. (Remember, our football is what Americans call “soccer,” and a “transfer” is when players move between clubs.)
The system uses Web search technology to identify content from other sports news sites that is similar to the content on the BBC Football Gossip Page. The move not only demonstrates a commitment by the BBC to “sharing the love” in linking more to external sites (something the BBC Trust asked them to do back in June), but also cleverly distributes their own brand.
This widget also cleverly distributes BBC’s own content (the top link on the widget? “Latest BBC football gossip”) by including buttons for embedding the widget on Facebook, hi5, or Orkut pages, WordPress or Blogger blogs, or personal Google homepages.
I’m not able to tell, however, whether with this widget BBC is still withholding “Google juice,” as in earlier experiments. Since this is a widget, and therefore “pulled” from elsewhere, I’m guessing that’s not the case. Still, I’m sure those other sites won’t complain about the traffic they receive from BBC.
Indeed, this strategy demonstrates once again that linking to other sites is generally a far more savvy move than not linking at all.
