Adwords Technique Questioned
Sorry I have been missing for a few months. Our recent SEO campaigns have been so successful it meant we had to move into larger offices and now we are in the process of putting on more staff.
More seo video tips to follow soon, however I wanted to alert you to a new action by the ACCC against Google.
This would not be the first shortsighted, ridiculous, inane and just plain stupid thing our Govt has done when it comes to the Internet.
I realise the ACCC is not technically Govt but they’re close enough!
Basically they have taken action against Google and the Trading Post for being “engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct”.
If you use adwords you would know that you can use keywords such as your competitor brands, so when someone types the phrase in your ad will appear. Google forbids trademarks etc in the actual ad copy though.
This is what the Trading Post did. They used the names of two car dealerships in their keywords so their ad would display if someone typed it in. The ACCC is alledging it was misleading because if someone clicked on the ad they would not be taken to the car dealership site but to the Trading Post site giving the impression that the companies were related.
Seriously, what a crock. Anyone involved in the search business knows that if a user hits a landing page and doesn’t see the info they wanted (like the car dealership) they hit the back button.
What about organic search?
How the hell does this affect organic search results? What about if I optimise a page for Kloster Ford (one of the dealerships) and I end up ranking for the phrase? Will the ACCC take action against me? It is a pure nonsense.
Actually that is not a bad idea, I think I may try that. People ring me up about Workchoice because I rank no.1 maybe I should keep a lookout for the ACCC.
This isn’t the first time The Trading Post has come under fire from the ACCC for such practices.
These businesses are complaining because they seem to be crap at Adwords or don’t understand search marketing.
If you are using competitors brands as keywords you may want to pull those campaigns until this thing is over. If you are worried about your brand being used in the copy of someone’s ad then get a trademark and Google will stop them.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
