Google cashes in on UK health referral ads

The internet giant charges the middlemen – known as referral agents – as much as 200 pounds each time someone visits their website via search page ads at the top of a Google page, a media investigation revealed. 

The referral agents advertise themselves as free advice helplines but receive as much as 20,000 pounds commission monthly each time a new patient is referred to private rehabilitation clinics, the report said. “The level of payments for these referral agents via promoted links cannot be justified, especially as those desperate to tackle their addictions are unknowingly picking up the bill,” Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative MP, who chairs the health select committee, said. 

She called on Google, which made 59 billion pounds from ads in 2016, to stop selling ads to referral agents. Google refuses to take ads from referral agents in the US, where the practice is illegal, but in Britain, it spurs by creating a bidding war between referral agencies who want their ads appear at the top of the Google search page, said the report.