Re: Unethical advertising practice
This may be legal, just as everyone seems to say it is, but the question
is not legality, but ethics. When you bid on key words they are supposed
to be just that. Keywords that have to do with YOUR website, not your
competitors. I thought that Goggle and Overture checked the key words
to there relevancy to a site. If they are bidding on your company's
name than how can that be a relevant keyword to there site. This
practice may not be illegal, but it is unethical. This is the type of
marketing tactics that give other online marketers a bad rep. This is no
better than spam. If this company can't just rely on their own key words
and feel they have the need to purchase their competitors names in order
to compete than obviously they can not be doing very well.
As a marketer I would never purchase the name of a competitor as a key
word. If they are looking for this company by name than that company
has done a great branding job, and obviously has a relationship of some
type with these people. These people know exactly what they are looking
for if they are typing in the name and purchasing it as a keyword would
not help. If they type in the name than that is what they want, who are
we to try to force these people to pick something they did not want.
It's a very misleading practice and if you brought this up with google
they may do something. The whole point of key words is relevancy- which
there is none there.
Sorry this type of marketing practices really upset me because they give
perfectly legit marketers a bad rep.
Alana S. Thornberg
AFTCO "When Success Matters"
http://www.aftconet.com
Received on Wed Nov 06 2002 - 07:31:12 CST
