Company competitor driving me crazy

welshman · Jun 2, 2009

Just a few questions about something that is driving me crazy. We have a competitor in town that is in the same business as us, and they have used, I assume, AdWords so that when someone does a search for our business, their name comes up as a sponsored link. Even if someone searches our precise name, theirs comes up. Their business has a name which has our location attached to it, so people assume its us that is the sponsored link and goes to them. Very cheeky of them!

Question 1: Is this illegal?

Question 2: what can I do to make them pay dearly for this?

Any blackhat deals costing them money would be ideal

keinehabe · Jun 2, 2009

if you know with sure they are using your company name to have their links up on the top of the sponsored searcn hire 10-20 kids and click on their links like hell

. Even this is not BH ... and even if is not ethical using competition name's/product names to bust your sales it's quite ugly so you turn them same type of favor

... let say 20-30K clicks per day within a month under their therms will make adwords folks to look into their campaign

theleadsource · Jun 2, 2009

It's not illegal, I do something very similar myself.

You could search for your business name from different IP addreses and when their ad comes up click on it. They have a limit on what they spend on a daily basis so you could do that every day until they hit their adwords spending limit for the day.

At some point, they will see that the ad is not generating any revenue for the money they are spending and will pull it.

keinehabe · Jun 2, 2009

what's not legal to click on adsense's ?

let's be serious dude , it's legal for the competition company to use other peoples names/works to get profit ? maybe unethical but illegal ... anyway ... just make them to lose money with adsense and repetitive clicks with same patern will make G employers to look closer to their campaign and start asking questions

shabang · Jun 2, 2009

I thought the OP meant that the competitor is bidding on their location and that's why the ads are popping up on search.
Is the OP doing SEO to optimise for his own site?Get number one in google organic and the competitiors ads shouldn't have much effect I would have thought

welshman · Jun 2, 2009

1. They are targeting our specific company name so that when you type our business name in, theirs pops up as a sponsored link.

2. To make it less confusing, I work for a large world respected Equine Veterinary Hospital. Other hospital has recently opened (about 6 months ago) they changed their name to be called (town's name) Equine Hospital, and because when people do a search, they think it is us because we are located in that town and they think there is only one hospital. Even if someone searched only our name, they would get another result.

I have realised not illegal. probably slightly unethical, and thanks for the suggestion in giving them some "extra" clicks. lol. Will do that.

welshman · Jun 2, 2009

I'm assuming its adwordsto be sponsored? Or is that called something else?

shabang · Jun 3, 2009

I see what you mean,they are certainly throwing some money at adwords although their organic results are not very good at all.You could have a double-barreled attack on them so to speak

newss · Jun 3, 2009

There is nothing you can do, it's google's search engine so they control the results that are displayed. It's no different than if you posted an advertisement on a particular radio station that was advertising some other event that a competing station sponsored. As long as the people that control the medium allow it, you SOL.

For instance, if Coke wanted to bid on the keyword Pepsi, they could do so. As long as they didn't mention Pepsi in their ad (since it's trademarked). but they could bid on the keyword Pepsi and put an ad saying "save a $1 off other brands" or "the better cola" ,ect.

newss · Jun 3, 2009

theleadsource said:
It's not illegal, I do something very similar myself.

You could search for your business name from different IP addreses and when their ad comes up click on it. They have a limit on what they spend on a daily basis so you could do that every day until they hit their adwords spending limit for the day.

At some point, they will see that the ad is not generating any revenue for the money they are spending and will pull it.

You are going to need a massive load of proxies, to pull this off. As Google only charges for the first click through within 24hrs from a single IP address. Not to mention if they see a massive bulk of proxy site traffic coming through a single adwords ad they are going to start looking at it pretty seriously, wondering whats going on.

gun-shy315 · Jun 3, 2009

welshman said:
1. They are targeting our specific company name so that when you type our business name in, theirs pops up as a sponsored link.

2. To make it less confusing, I work for a large world respected Equine Veterinary Hospital. Other hospital has recently opened (about 6 months ago) they changed their name to be called (town's name) Equine Hospital, and because when people do a search, they think it is us because we are located in that town and they think there is only one hospital. Even if someone searched only our name, they would get another result.

I have realised not illegal. probably slightly unethical, and thanks for the suggestion in giving them some "extra" clicks. lol. Will do that.

PM on the details of your slime ball competitor. I'll help you out. We have to stick together here

And yes...I have a massive load of proxies.

Company competitor driving me crazy

welshman

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keinehabe

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