This is actually a couple of weeks old now, but still a very relevant article. It was posting on the AAP website on June 9th 2010.

It appears that embattled BP went on a campaign recently to buy up key search words to direct traffic away from websites that might be putting a negative spin on the environmental disaster that is the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

Internet users searching on Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft's Bing for "oil spill," "Gulf oil spill," or related phrases deliver a "sponsored link" at the top of the search results page to BP.com and the message: "Learn more about how BP is helping."

Clicking on the sponsored link takes a user to BP's website, where the company outlines the measures it is taking to address the environmental damage from the Gulf oil disaster.

Sponsored links are purchased by advertisers and feature prominently at the top of a search results page or along the side next to results delivered by the search engine's algorithms, such as links to news items or other material.

This kind of action illustrates clearly the power of the internet, and the public relations approach that is generally taken when addressing issues such as this. This would be standard practise. Large corporates often mitigate negative publicity risk by purchasing key internet assets. Domain names is a case in point.

When you look into a bunch of negative geared domains regarding the current situation, you will find that most are just parked, and were purchased around the time the media frenzy started. A whole lot of randoms that I did a Whois search on are all owned by the same Domain Cloaking Company - Domains By Proxy Inc.
This means that they have taken these domains off the market. If I wanted to produce a website called BP Kills and use BPkills.com I would not be able to - the domain has already been purchased (on 19th May 2010 to be exact). Another form of risk mitigation. I would imagine that the BP PR dept. went into over drive one morning on far too many frappiccinnos and went nuts on buying up everything they could think of - BPKills.com, BPoilspill.com, etc etc

From the article regarding the purchase of key search terms:

A BP spokesman, Toby Odone, confirmed to ABC News that the company was purchasing search terms.

"We have bought search terms on search engines like Google to make it easier for people to find out more about our efforts in the Gulf and make it easier for people to find key links to information on filing claims, reporting oil on the beach and signing up to volunteer," Odone told ABC.

Scott Slatin, who runs the New York-based search engine marketing company Rivington, told ABC he estimated BP was paying more than $US10,000 ($A12,359) a day to maintain the various search terms.
"They paid to lock themselves into the first position against the oil spill terms, essentially putting a positive message on top of the news," Slatin said.