5 replies to this topic

[marknapior]

I will be starting a PPC campaign for my company in the near future. I am wondering what the consequences, if any there are for using a competitor's name as one of my keywords. Some of them are not being used at all, so right now I won't be competing for the keyword. I think I read a few weeks ago in Jill's newsletter that their name is their intellectual property. But is it ok to use it until they complain?

[SearchRank]

What if they don't complain and instead just sue? It's a chance you take hoping they will just send a cease and desist before they file suit.

Most likely though, the PPC service provider will not allow you to use competitor keywords if it is evident that you do not have the right to use them (such as if you are selling their products, promoting their services, etc.).

Also what about the end user who searches for the competitor, finds your site and then leaves pissed? Is it going to bring your site business or just make people mad that they didn't find what they were looking for because the listing they clicked on was mis-leading.

All questions to ponder ...

[marknapior]

Those are basically all the things that I had been considering. Thanks for the input.

[Haystack]

Hi Marknapior,
you may find this related article interesting:
http://www.investiga...wsletv7n1_1.htm

[cline]

One company I did this for -- at the CEO's suggestion -- got sued. One, where the CEO explicitly authorized doing this, after a complete discussion of everything that could go wrong, got nastygrams from their competitors threatening legal action. One client has been running competitor's names for years, very successfully, and the competitors have apparently never noticed.

I personally recommend avoiding using actual names of competitors, and instead exploiting every ambiguity in what searchers actually type in to the search engine to find a particular competitor such that the phrase being targeted cannot be said to be specifically about the competitor. In that case, one is free from issues of trademark infringement.

For example, let's say you want to go after High Rankings® Advisor via Adwords. You can advertise broadly on "high rankings" or "rankings advisor" and get everyone looking for "High Rankings® Advisor."

[mcanerin]

This may or may not help: (since it's not PPC)

I have a customer who wanted to show up for a competing term, but he didn't sell that term. When I asked why he would want that, he told me that people just look for that term because it's fairly generic, but that his item was way better. He then listed a bunch of fairly convincing reasons why this was so.

I told him that I wouldn't help him with any form of copyright violation or search hijacking, but that I would help him put together a comparision page between his product and the competing one.

Since it was a legitimate comparision, I could make it nice and keyword rich in an ethical and searcher friendly fashion - we even made sure the title of the page let people know it was a comparision for the competing term. It seems to be pretty successful.

I wonder if you could run a PPC for a legitimate comparision page? It might be good at conversions because if it's done right you are providing good info to a customer.

But I would never bid on a competitor's terms just to hijack a search. Ethics aside, tricking potential customers is a bad long term strategy.

Ian