When Someone Bids Your Business Name

Someone bidding on your name or trademark? SEOptimise covers the issue in this article as it pertains to major brands in the UK.

The subject is timely as it pertains to my local clients and what I see occurring in the local space in general.

Talk to any small business owner and watch their reaction when they see or hear a competitor is bidding on their name or business. Someone like Sony or Apple can send a legal team to Google's door to fight back retailers from bidding on their products. A local plumber, roofer or glass repair business doesn't have the resources or know where to start.

Google offers this page for a general discussion on trademark abuse. Basically the business owner is urged to take direct action on the infringing party.

"...the advertisers themselves are responsible for the keywords and ad content that they choose to use. Accordingly, we encourage trademark owners to resolve their disputes directly with the advertisers, particularly because the advertisers may have similar advertisements on other sites."

So they advise the offended to talk to the offender. This is a touchy area. If your competitor has the brass to advertise using your personal or business name, effectively stealing your business, you are not in the greatest mood when you pick up the phone.

Who needs this headache?

What happens if the offending party tells the offended to blow off?

One tact is to have an attorney draw up cease and desist letter. The advertiser may simply cite Google's own Terms of Service and say too bad.

Another angle is to fight fire with fire and bid on the offenders business name, key services or products.

Yet another is to hire an online marketing specialist to deal with the issue.

A simple test to determine if a competitor is bidding on your personal or business name is to search Google for all of your identifiers. If you see your competitor's bidding on your name or business service don't panic. In some cases the business may not even know they are doing it.

In my experience it's an even split between business owners and unscrupulous marketers taking advantage of the lack of a competitors understanding of the process. So put your shotgun away and call in the virtual gun.

The link is above.

Consultation is always free.

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Another Mousetrap

Reading today the news and interesting columns on SEL I found a profiled sponsored link to Firefactor.Coffeecup.com. The company lures you to a "free firefactor mini-report" for your website so I thought I would give it a spin. I inserted one of my blogs into the form and waited the 10 minutes they suggested it would take to have the report sent to my email inbox.
Once the "report" arrived I clicked back to the site to get the information. Surprisingly I had to insert my password. I had no account (didn't know I needed one) so I could not access the report. There was no ready link to open an account to view my report.

There was however information on how I could upgrade for a full report for a fee. I felt misled when I was directed to the pay account page.
All I wanted was the free report but I was expertly herded like a sheep to the trough to a checkout stand. It seems anyone signing up for the "for fee" service will get a broad website report and submission to various search directories and engines. I won't go far into that mess here but generally companies that promise submission to dozens, hundreds or thousands of search sites are looking for easy money.
Be warned submission to many of these sites may invite email and solicitations that could drag out for months. Agents for many of those sites will hound you to "add on" for special placement on their self proclaimed important "niche" websites. Neither your business or web profile will be enhanced by submission to sites like iKenya.com, EnlacesBolivia or Szukaj.com. (resolves to Ebay by the way)

There is NO substitute for manual insertion to key directories and search sites.

After some searching I did get to the account page. They sent me a password and I got to look at the report. Some good, some bad about my site but it all led to a push for the upgraded version. The optimization packages they offer may be top grade, I don't know. I can't speculate on that side of their service. I'll assume they provide OK options for people who click through for those services.
I sense some tricky marketing tactics that prey on the unsuspecting and it makes my job harder.

Every client I talk to is brand new to advertising on the Internet. They see it as confusing, complicated and expensive. As a search marketer one of my main tasks is to unmask the confusion and make the process less complicated than it appears. Small business has had it with traditional marketers (yellow pages, newspapers, radio etc.) who long held a vise grip on client accessibility. It would be too easy to obfuscate or misrepresent opportunities for business owners.

I am not an old media marketer but suffer from the reputation old media marketers built. Too often when I mention to a prospective customer what I can do for them I see the glossy eyes, the blank out. They have been continuously assaulted by smooth talking YP and radio people for years.
Marketers in this new media don't need to obfuscate, misdirect or skew data and facts. It is not necessary.
When I see confusing marketing strategies I know my job will not get easier and understand fully why marketers are loathed.