Force Four Google hijack by Mailspeed?

[john_morris_uk]

Others will understand these things better than I do, but I notice that when I Google for "Force Four chandlery" the first hit on Google is not surprisingly entitled "Force Four Chandlery" but is actually a link to Mailspeed Marine. I know that they've fooled the system somehow, but it's still a bit sneaky...

 

[BrendanS]

The adverts appear at the top of each search, are in a different coloured box, and state "sponsored link"

I'm not sure why you consider an advert as a hijack or fooling the system or sneaky. Its what pays for Google

 

[robp]

Brendan will know much better than me. But there are various ways to get your company at the top of a search list.

I notice that whatever premier league football team you search for, for example "Tottenham", the "Premier League" will always come up first.
I wonder how much they pay out to keep that there and why?

 

[elton]

I'm not sure why you consider an advert as a hijack or fooling the system or sneaky. Its what pays for Google

I doubt Force Four Chandlery will see it that way.

In fact I don't see it that way either. If I see a hyperlink that says Force Four Chandlery I expect it to link to Force Four Chandlery, not something else entirely. It subverts the whole purpose of hyperlinks for a start. Suppose it linked to a porn site? Or a plumber?

 

[john_morris_uk]

The adverts appear at the top of each search, are in a different coloured box, and state "sponsored link"

I'm not sure why you consider an advert as a hijack or fooling the system or sneaky. Its what pays for Google

No problem - it was such a simple link that I didn't notice that it was a sponsored advert type link that we are all used to. I assumed it was a hijacked link.

I imagine that you get Mailspeed up the top of the page whenever you google anything involving chandlery

 

[Skysail]

It happens.

Google 'zincsmart' for anodes and MGDuff appears as the sponsored link. They just pay for zincsmart as a keyword. Zincsmart could do the same if they were prepared to outbid MGDuff on Adwords.

 

[Salty John]

It's very sneaky, but Force 4 do it also. If you google Marinestore Chandlery, for instance, you sometimes get Force 4 Marinestore at the top of the page - a paid ad for Force 4. The Marinestore bit is in bold black, the rest of the ad in pale green.

The ads appears when specific search terms are used, so you just put your competitors names and variations of their names into your list of search words. For instance, if you search for Tiller-Hand you will get a Tillermate paid ad at the top of the page above the Salty John link.

 

[elton]

It happens.

Google 'zincsmart' for anodes and MGDuff appears as the sponsored link. They just pay for zincsmart as a keyword. Zincsmart could do the same if they were prepared to outbid MGDuff on Adwords.

Well that's equally stupid.

 

[Blue5]

Its a good way to be up the top of the rankings but you need to be sure its going to work and deep pockets, we used it a couple of years back and at £1 a hit we were not in the top 3..................

 

[stownsend]

It google adsense, searching on certain words, they cost per click, so for example force 4 chandlery would cost 50p per click to the mailspeed, in order to keep it at the top they may pay £1 per click, therefore when you enter some search terms other companies show up on the sponsored links.

Cheers

Stu

 

[elton]

It google adsense, searching on certain words, they cost per click, so for example force 4 chandlery would cost 50p per click to the mailspeed, in order to keep it at the top they may pay £1 per click, therefore when you enter some search terms other companies show up on the sponsored links.

Cheers

Stu

Explains how Google can afford to do "streets".

 

[john_morris_uk]

At the same time I posted my original comment I e-mailed Force Four. A couple of e-mails saying they were looking into it later and I got this.

"Dear Mr Morris,

Thank you for your recent email regarding Mailspeed Marine.

Unfortunately I hate to say that this has been an ongoing issue of what we consider "bad practice advertising" with them and another of our competitors for a little while now.

As you may or may not know Google provide an area for companies to pay to advertise their products and services (The sponsored link area, differentiated by a yellow background) for search results. And our competitors have started to pay to appear when people search for us. And now they've taken that one step further by including our name on their adverts. Which we don't feel is good practice, because people find it harder to actually find us.

They've made assurances in the past that they'd stop the practice but obviously haven't. I'll be contacting them this afternoon, to politely ask them to stop, and i've emailed Google on the back of your email to see if there is anything they can do.

Thank you for taking the time to contact us, it is sincerely appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Lawrence Parr

IT Manager"

All's fair in trade and advertising then...

 

[jhr]

At the same time I posted my original comment I e-mailed Force Four. A couple of e-mails saying they were looking into it later and I got this.

"Dear Mr Morris,

Thank you for your recent email regarding Mailspeed Marine.

Unfortunately I hate to say that this has been an ongoing issue of what we consider "bad practice advertising" with them and another of our competitors for a little while now.

As you may or may not know Google provide an area for companies to pay to advertise their products and services (The sponsored link area, differentiated by a yellow background) for search results. And our competitors have started to pay to appear when people search for us. And now they've taken that one step further by including our name on their adverts. Which we don't feel is good practice, because people find it harder to actually find us.

They've made assurances in the past that they'd stop the practice but obviously haven't. I'll be contacting them this afternoon, to politely ask them to stop, and i've emailed Google on the back of your email to see if there is anything they can do.

Thank you for taking the time to contact us, it is sincerely appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Lawrence Parr

IT Manager"

All's fair in trade and advertising then...

I'd say this is verging on "passing off" but unfortunately you have to instruct M'Learned Friends in order to do anything about it - something that a relatively impecunious Swindlery will probably find to be beyond their financial means

 

[Blue5]

At the same time I posted my original comment I e-mailed Force Four. A couple of e-mails saying they were looking into it later and I got this.

"Dear Mr Morris,

Thank you for your recent email regarding Mailspeed Marine.

Unfortunately I hate to say that this has been an ongoing issue of what we consider "bad practice advertising" with them and another of our competitors for a little while now.

As you may or may not know Google provide an area for companies to pay to advertise their products and services (The sponsored link area, differentiated by a yellow background) for search results. And our competitors have started to pay to appear when people search for us. And now they've taken that one step further by including our name on their adverts. Which we don't feel is good practice, because people find it harder to actually find us.

They've made assurances in the past that they'd stop the practice but obviously haven't. I'll be contacting them this afternoon, to politely ask them to stop, and i've emailed Google on the back of your email to see if there is anything they can do.

Thank you for taking the time to contact us, it is sincerely appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Lawrence Parr

IT Manager"

All's fair in trade and advertising then...

Much like the practice in Yellow Pages used to be by including a numeral or the letter A in front of your ad to get you at the beginning of the category

 

[john_morris_uk]

I'd say this is verging on "passing off" but unfortunately you have to instruct M'Learned Friends in order to do anything about it - something that a relatively impecunious Swindlery will probably find to be beyond their financial means

How quickly the IT world moves - the problem with Google search as outlined in my OP has now stopped.

The Mailspeed Advert has been removed and the real Force Four appears at the top.

No connection with them - except that I just ordered some mast steps through their web-site.

 

[kesh]

google's accepting money for keyword based advertising when the keywords in question are trademarks of rivals has a long and controversial history with several court rulings.

 

[john_morris_uk]

google's accepting money for keyword based advertising when the keywords in question are trademarks of rivals has a long and controversial history with several court rulings.

Perhaps they are learning - the Mailspeed advertising link is back up as the first link when you Google for Force Four but its now called "For Low Cost Chandlery" and doesn't mimic the Force Four typeface etc.

 

[TiggerToo]

Perhaps they are learning - the Mailspeed advertising link is back up as the first link when you Google for Force Four but its now called "For Low Cost Chandlery" and doesn't mimic the Force Four typeface etc.

Fred drift: my experience with F4 is that it has been a whole lot faster that MSM. And communications with them over the phone have given me much more confidence in their service.

 

[nathanlee]

Others will understand these things better than I do, but I notice that when I Google for "Force Four chandlery" the first hit on Google is not surprisingly entitled "Force Four Chandlery" but is actually a link to Mailspeed Marine. I know that they've fooled the system somehow, but it's still a bit sneaky...

If I remember correctly, it was about 2 years ago when google changed their policy regarding brand name bidding. It used to be disallowed, but they relaxed the rules to get more money from advertisers

It's also more fair to since it allows Dyson to bid on Hoover, and more generally smaller companies to have a competitive presence and offer alternatives to well established brands.

If they were beating them in the organic listings, that would be a bit sneaky, but impressive, and not at all underhand.

 

[DevonMark]

It might be an infringement of a trademark if I was to use "Coco-Cola" in an Adwords advert to sell Pepsi and you can bet that the company lawyers would be on to me very quickly. However, it is not up to Google to decide what is and isn't trademark infringement.

Really if you are running an Adwords campaign you need to be monitoring it all the time to check for things like this.