While working on one of my little side-projects I spotted some rather interesting meta content (I also saw a lot of dross, but that’s another day’s work).
The meta tags included on the main page of a well known company’s website included explicit references to a couple of their competitors.
I didn’t have the time to examine all the subpages, but the inclusion of the competitors names in the header content was obviously deliberate.
I know that meta content isn’t as important now as it used to be, but it’s still worrying to see a company attempt to use a rival’s name in its online marketing strategy.
Has anyone else come across this recently?
Michele Neylon :: Pensieri
Technology, Marketing, Domains, Thoughts
Lol…Sounds like someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
It’s been going on for years, there’s been court cases about that kind of thing in the US and I think in the UK too. In all honesty, I think attacking legally is a waste of time unless defamation or some kind of (major) copyright infringement is going on. Even then I probably wouldn’t bother my arse; I’d rather fight fire with fire.
It can also have an innocent (well semi-innocent) purpose – to indicate to the SE’s the particular niche the company operates in. If done correctly it can help niche targeting.
Legally, if the competitors’ names use generic words then it can be hard to prove trademark infringement. I have targeted generic keywords that form part of a competitor’s name for a client who outranks that competitor for their own name (and certain derviatives). Not so nice, but hey, the client asked so….
Not likely to have any effect if in the METAs anyhow. Probably obvious what they intended, just poorly executed.
I’ve seen companies look at their competitors high ranked sites and ask their IT/Designer to copy their Meta Tags thinking it’ll get the same good results for them. Possibly a bit of that going on too?