25 replies to this topic

[amabaie]

Some things make me just want to bang my head against the wall. :doh: Others leave me with a big question mark. This one does both.

I have heard a lot about keyword ownership, but most of it has come from spam messages, so I thought I would ask if anybody knows about this. My gut instinct is that it is totally bogus, but then I also see TV ads saying "keyword this" or "keyword that" for AOL users.

Then there are the claims of being able to ensure that only your site will turn up at Google or MSN if you own the keyword, which smells to me like someone selling me a deed to 40 acres on Jupiter, complete with plumbing, electricity, cable, room service, and a mint on my pillow.

Does anybody have any thoughts, or better yet -- knowledge, on this?

[qwerty]

Back in the days of a company called RealNames, keyword ownership was something that worked automatically in IE. That is, if a user typed "keyword" into the address bar of IE, they would be taken directly to the site that had paid RealNames for that keyword.

About a year or two back, Microsoft refused to renew their contract with RealNames, and they went bankrupt. The companies that now claim to "sell" keywords are not selling something that works automatically in IE. Instead, their product only works if a given user has an application running on their PC that will grab the information from the address bar and send the browser to the subscriber's site. I doubt many people have that app, and I imagine that most who do got it when it was piggybacked onto some other download. In other words, they probably don't want it, and they're probably not happy to see it do what it does, which means that the owner of a site that "bought" a keyword is probably not viewed in a favorable light by those people.

[Bernard]

Bob is correct. These "buy keyword" programs only work on versions of Internet Explorer that have been patched with the "keyword registrar's" software. The fact that they do not fully explain how it works to the lay person is telling.

[Jill]

You were right to trust your instincts. Those programs are indeed totally bogus and should be dismissed as such without another thought given to them, imo.

Jill

[qwerty]

One thing: AOL keywords are real, but I think you can only buy them directly from AOL, and obviously, they only work for AOL users.

[fred]

Hi

How could someone buy a word ?

Remember when Microsoft they tried to copyright the word windows , well windows is a general term that describes many things and they could not get the copyright on windows ( I think that that's the story , is getting old in my head ). Therefore they copyrighted 'Microsoft Windows'.

Can you image a windows framing company not being able to use the word windows without microsoft approval ?

I think AOL keywords can only be used in the AOL browser

[mcanerin]

I would like to put everyone on notice that I now own the keyword "Search Engine". Please pay me $1 per use in forums and email, and remove all mentions of it on your websites so it doesn't interfere with my rankings.

If you don't believe me, I should be able to show you a patent soon - I'll be hiring one of Amazons lawyers.

Failure to comply will result in my not getting any of your money, and that's obviously a bad thing, and you wouldn't want bad things to happen, would you? So pay up.

Mr. Ian K. McAnerin
BASc, BSc, LLB, MCSE
Chief Litigator of Dewey Skruem and Howe

[fred]

HI

sorry mcanerin

I just bought

Website Promotion in Calgary, Canada

so you pay up

[anngcook]

-What's "bogus" is the self-proclaimed/self-promoted search engine/marketing experts that spend too much time at se forums pretending they know what they're talking about instead of actually doing their homework.

But those of us that actually make a living marketing in extremely competetive areas and make money on things you ignorantly label as "bogus" are laughing at you! That's nothing new! You can fool the entry level folks but you know who you are and you know you're no expert compared to real professionals.

Anyway, for the most part, there are slews of companies out there with plug-ins and advertising buying keywords that cause a site to come up when the address bar is searched. Bad deal. For those of you who really want to know about what's up and coming and working as I write, from real life business experience, check out a company called common names at www.commonname.com.

You still have to pick your key words carefully according to volume searches but the price is right and quality traffic is there to be had. Anyway the details are there and by going straight to the source you can avoid the many resellers. Call it what you want, the traffic is converting for our business just fine!

[qwerty]

OK, I took a look at commonname.

Looks like they offer two different advertising services: you can sign up for their PPC program, and your listing will appear on their search engine, xpsn.com. Fine. Another PPC. I'd need to know a lot more about them before I'd sign up for that, because there's just too much fraud in the PPC business, and I've never heard of that SE.

Second, you've got the CNKeyword program, which involves taking a user to your site when they enter your keywords in the address bar. This requires what they call a browser "upgrade," and they say 28 million users have it. Where did they get it? It's offered on CN's site. Is it also piggybacked on any other applications? I'd like to see a list of those applications, and I'd like to see how they tell people they're going to get this "upgrade."

I was a customer of RealNames. And I have a few things I'd like to say about them. First of all, they advertised the service. The same way you would see AOL keywords listed for products, you'd also see their RealName. So just like the AOL program, people using RealNames to come to your site did so intentionally. Second, they did not require a plugin for IE. It was automatic. For Netscape, a plugin was required. As far as I know, the only place to get that plugin was Netscape itself. It was never made part of some other download, so no one ever got it without noticing they had it.

And finally, in spite of all this, we never made much money from our RealNames account. We got a little traffic from it -- not really enough to justify paying. Had they not gone bankrupt, we probably would not have continued our subscription.

So I'd appreciate it if you'd tell us how CommonNames is different from the "slews of companies out there with plug-ins and advertising buying keywords that cause a site to come up when the address bar is searched." I didn't see anything on their site that would give me more confidence in them than in any of the others.

[compar]

I was a customer of RealNames.  ..... 
 
And finally, in spite of all this, we never made much money from our RealNames account. We got a little traffic from it -- not really enough to justify paying. Had they not gone bankrupt, we probably would not have continued our subscription. 

That was also my experience with RealNames. But I also seem to remember that they were very inexpensive initially and then upon renewal suddenly wanted a lot more money -- something like the Overture experience, but a much higher increase.

However -- here we go with semantics again -- they are not "bogus". A bogus ten dollar bill is a counterfeit or fake bill. These "keyword" ownership programs are real. They are not universal. They only work with plugins. But they are not fake.

QWERTY's questions are valid. Will they produce any traffic? Can they give us some independent verification of the search traffic they service? But if you think about it they are not much difference in concept that Overture or AdWord. With Overture you can "buy a keyword" -- make the highest bid. The difference with these is that the user types the keyword into the browser address bar rather than into a SE. This saves a step for people who have the plugins and actively uses this system.

[Jill]

Welcome, anngcook!

Jill

[MakeMeTop]

CommonName is "spyware" or "scumware" depending on how you call software that hides in free downloads and hi-jacks your browser settings. Like others of these applications it can crash browsers, reset your search settings, trigger pop-unders and attempts to reset your default settings everytime you connect to the internet. CommonName also has some other hidden extras to surprise you.

A search on Google for CommonName will bring up a list of sites which give information on removing this somewhat parasitical application.

But some advertisers will love it. Anything to annoy the user

[Alan Perkins]

Spybot DB entry for CommonName

[Username]

I have been getting spam from a company [URL deleted see [url="http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules"]guideline #9[/url]]They told me in a conversation that in 5 years EVERYONE would have their plugin installed. I'm still laughing a week later. When I asked them how some guy it CA could by the word Harley Davidson he said it was perfectly legit and it wasn't going to violate anyones copyright laws. That just made me laugh even harder. These are all flash in the pan products that will be nothing more than faint memory in a few more months. Maybe less.

Edited by Jill, 30 September 2003 - 09:37 AM.