Unethical Advertising Practices

From: Ian A. Ippolito <IanIppolito_at_exhedra.com>
Date: Wed 06 Nov 2002 11:22:59 -0600

   I agree with Pesach that as long as no relationship between the
targeted company and your product is implied, that it is simply
presenting alternatives and would not be considered unethical.

   However, to add something interesting the discussion...below is an
email I recently received from Overture saying that I couldn't target
the keyword of a competitor (we are a site called RentACoder.com and the
competitor is ELance). The listing had been there for ***over a
year***, so I'm presuming my competitor complained to them and had them
take it down (because they also sent a legal letter as well). Looks
like Overture will pretty much "cave in" when confronted:

>>>>
Nov 01 2002 12:25 PT

Dear Ian,

As you may know, our Quality Control Team constantly monitors all
Overture listings. We specifically look for listings that have slipped
past our editors, or that no longer meet our guidelines.

After a careful review, we've removed this listing:

elance

Search terms must reflect precisely the content offered on the Web site.
Product brand names are acceptable as long as the specific brand name or
information about the brand is offered on the site. Although your site
offers products or services similar to those indicated by the brand
name, the content is not sufficient enough to satisfy our requirements
for the brand name as a search term.

We're sorry this wasn't caught in our first review. Thanks for your
cooperation and understanding.


Sincerely,

Aislinn Elliot
Relevance Analyst
Search Quality Team
Overture
>>>>


Sincerely,
Ian Ippolito

www.RentACoder.com:
How Software Gets Done

Exhedra Solutions, Inc.
1209 La Brad Lane
Tampa, FL 33613
P: (813) 908-9029
F: (813) 265-4621
E: IanIppolito_at_exhedra.com






Received on Wed Nov 06 2002 - 11:22:59 CST