Illeagal or unethical?

[openmind]

Is it illegal or unethical for a company to deliberately skew search engine results in order to gain traffic from another company?

For example, if I deliberately created a page where I targeted a phrase such as "Have an Open Mind for Hosting use wxyz.com" in order to manipulate results for people searching Open Mind Hosting?

Note that the above is an example, it's not the actual manipulation being
carried out...

The term being targeted is not a trademark btw. If this is illegal and something can be done about it, would any legal bods contact me on 08456 445 789 as I have some work for you :)

[adam]

I would have thought if it was not a trademark then it would be hard unless it was an unfair attack type of thing against advertising rules but then this is the internet...

[bwglaw]

A potential copyright infringement and cyber-squatting by passing-off traffic intended for your site.

[openmind]

A potential copyright infringement and cyber-squatting by passing-off traffic intended for your site.
Would you like some work Jonathan? :)

[bwglaw]

Would you like some work Jonathan? :)

If you are happy to deal by email then I am happy to assist by all means.

Jonathan

[Ozzy]

Umm, I have a couple of competitors who activily target "quick formations" using portal pages and also PPC. Didn't think it was something I could take action to stop though and I have a trademark on "Quick Formations" although only a stylised trademark.

[sirearl]

I don't see how you can claim rights to common terms "quick formation" would be like "cars for sale" or "quick car sales" very different from having a brand name.

I would guess that "open mind" would also be classed as a common phrase.

my 2p

Earl

[Games4Business]

One of our other companies had problems with a fly-by-night company, adding our company name and also 30 others to the meta data, so that they would come up in the search engine rankings next to our name (same business field) so we asked them nicely to remove our company name from their meta data, at first they didn't then threatend legal action, and an email to g00gle they couldn't remove it quick enough.

[sirearl]

had a bit more thought about this,we sell dolls houses under the name "cosy corners" now seeing "cosy corners" in the SERP's not a problem.

but seeing "cosy corners dolls houses " would be and some action could be taken.

I think this post highlights that picking a fairly exclusive name for your company is probably wise.

Earl

[RayB]

If you search A Local Printer - Micros**t come third and forth - should I be worried - are they out to get me :)

[sirearl]

If you search A Local Printer - Micros**t come third and forth - should I be worried - are they out to get me :)


Have you got the names and address's of the 2 people who searched for " a local printer" last year? ;)

[RayB]

Have you got the names and address's of the 2 people who searched for " a local printer" last year? ;)

I get about 30 - 40 uniques a day for "Local Printer" "A Local Printer" and "alocalprinter"..........................

[SolsburyHill]

A related subject, but maybe of interest to some on the use of trade marks in key-word advertising, adwords ad the like:-

http://www.out-law.com/default.aspx?page=6775

My gut reaction is if the term concenred is generic then there isn't a case.

[WebPageOne-Solutions]

Unethical errmm maybe ! Illegal I wouldn't have thought so, unless you were impersonating the original company with the intent to take money from customers.

[creospace]

Interesting about the local printer thing because if I was looking for a local printer i'd use the name of the town I was in not literally 'a local printer'

anyway back to the thread - is there any more news on this re the original culprit Phil?

[RayB]

Interesting about the local printer thing because if I was looking for a local printer i'd use the name of the town I was in not literally 'a local printer'

OT I know - but needed to answer:


A significant minority of people will search for: Local (service I need) instead of the more logical: Town Name (service I need)
People are now searching for our company - the brand awareness is kicking in

[pay-on-performance-seo]

I think it is a good method to get some extra traffic. For example, when one of the big price comparison sites dedicated an seo'd page to each of the big loan providers in the market, one of big loan providers suffered a Google penalty and the price comparison site were then #1 for the well known brand name of the loan provider and needless to say got quite a bit of traffic from this.

However if you consider it unethical an even better way to spend your time is researching the long tail keywords of your market. Great area, as normally uncompetitive and easy to rank well for and conversion rates are extremely high for long tail

[I, Brian]

It's neither illegal nor unethical to seek to influence search engine results - but what a lot of people fail to bear in mind is that there's little point doing so unless the traffic converts.

I mean, I once found a fish tackle site republishing my marketing site info from Alexa on its site. Come on - doing so in volume may attract traffic, but it's not going to convert to a sale, now, is it? :)

[tradesecur]

This is a fence balancing exercise, most cases would be unique, generally speaking, anything trademarked should be avoided like the plague, and any traffic poaching initiatives should be approached with caution, especially in certain industries.