Context Public Relations

Before you call your lawyer please read on. It will save you a great deal of money!

A number of our clients are now asking us about a very simple problem, when they search on Google for themselves, their competitors appear on the sponsored links. They immediately think this is illegal, it is breaching copyright or trademark rules and is downright underhand.

Whatever you do please don’t over react. Since May 2008 Google has changed their policy on competitor trademark or name keyword bidding. To find out more please read Googles own rules by clicking here

For those of you who don’t want to read the article here is a very brief summary:

• Competitors can bid on each keywords as long as trademarks are not used in the ads
• If you report a problem to Google it may take them time to react so you will not be turned off overnight. 

At Context we recommend the following actions:

• Ensure that you bid a small amount on your brand names, company name or trademarks - this should be at the lowest amount possible. Google displays ads on relevance and yours will be the most relevant. You can also set these keywords up as a specific campaign with it’s own budget to limit the amount you spend. 
• Contact the competitor and ask them politely to stop - a client of ours did this and it was the most effective and their competitor stopped immediately.
• Don’t assume your competitor knows that they are bidding on the words - a number of companies use agencies to handle their keywords and Google ad spend.
• As a last resort if the competitor won’t stop bid on their keywords. We really don’t suggest you use this tactic - it can greatly increases the cost of bidding on your own keywords and is will not knock them off the list.
• The final thought is ignore it - your customers or prospects have used Google to search for you by name not service - why should they look at a competitor site. If you have high organic page rankings (through good PR) you will not have a problem.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.

Tags: Marketing Mix, SEO by Rob
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It’s funny how our expectations have changed over the years.  It was only just over a decade ago that you’d send out a press release by fax or post, and you’d start to see the results in the magazines 4 or 6 weeks later at the earliest.

Nowadays, you send the news by email, and you find yourself wondering what’s gone wrong if you don’t see online hits for it within a couple of hours.  Such are our expectations of a fast turn-round.  But not all stories will hit quickly — and nor should they.

Twice in the past week I’ve been checking Google news every few hours, hoping to see the story I’d just sent out pop up.  After a day, I’d given up hope.  But sure enough, a couple of days after sending the stories, they started to get hits, and continued to do so.

I asked a journalist contact on www.vnunet.com about this.  He said that some stories have an obvious finite life-span (like this one:  http://www.itpro.co.uk/603807/six-laptops-stolen-from-south-london-hospital), and get used quickly.  Others — for example, customer stories, that are less time sensitive – are often held for a day or two, so that they can be given a little more consideration and work.

So don’t be downhearted if you don’t get a bumper crop of news links immediately on issuing a press release.  Not everything these days moves at lightning speed. 

Tags: Public Relations, Technology by Craig
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