While bidding on competitor brands is not against Google policies, this guy buries a phone number in the display URL.
4 Comments
4 Comments
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Comments
When I clicked on the link to our company site listed in this blog post, I noticed a few local and national competitors showing up. I searched again in quotes and they were still there. Not only do I think that is slimy but I think it’s sad those companies are so poor at their own marketing that they have to borrow from someone else’s brand name.
This is perfectly common in some industries like travel where everyone is bidding on each others brand names. A search for Travelocity shows ads for MyFlightDiscounts, Travelation, Cheapflights, CheapoAir, Smartfares, Priceline, etc… (All direct competitors) Same thing happens when you search for Priceline, you get ads for Expedia, Hotwire, hotels.com and other direct competitors. I could go on and on in the travel vertical.
It looks like this guy has stopped his ad campaign, at least temporarily. Maybe the attention from here caused some of those people to click ads and cause extra expense for him? It’s actually good strategy, but not really ethical. Especially since he’s likely to gain the angst of such a tight community. But, then again, many are after traffic and sales as opposed to reputation. Kudos to SearchEngineTigers for calling him out.
They’re back up Tim. He has changed the ads slightly, to remove the phone number entirely. @HawaiiSEO, absolutely correct, as long as there’s no trademark infringement, it’s a valid strategy. The thing that got me was someone who is a member of a professional organization, that’s supposed to further the goals of all members, using the membership list of that self same organization in order to further their own goals at the expense of the other members. Just feels a bit skeevy to me.