Question

Topic: SEO/SEM

Leeching Off Of Our Web Name By Mis-spelling

Posted by Anonymous on 10/5/2004 at 3:29 PM ET 50 Points
I recently discovered that a competitor is linking their product to a URL that has 1 easy-to-misspell letter in our name. There is nothing whatsoever in their product that contains any remote spelling of our name. Their site is clearly to steer accidental traffic to their product. CAn anything be done about this?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 10/5/2004 at 4:02 PM Member
    Can you give the URLs of your site and the competitor's usage?
  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 10/5/2004 at 4:22 PM Accepted
    Google "typosquatter" and "typosquatting" for more articles on this subject than you will have time or desire to read.

  • Posted by Deremiah *CPE on 10/5/2004 at 4:43 PM Member
    tschenk,

    I would think this would be easy to prove as you appeal to the search engines. If this is not a legal name or business name that they can prove they have been using that's part of your proof that they have created a branch of your name to drive traffic to their website through a phony URL name. Go for it! Is there anything else I can do for you?

    Your Servant, Deremiah, *CPE (Customer Passion Evangelist)
  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 10/5/2004 at 4:52 PM Accepted
    Thanks for the description of the issue.

    One of the reasons to ask about the names is to get a feel for where you and your competitor are located. if you are both in the States or Europe, you may have some recourse as the rules followed are stronger. But if the competitor is in a country were rules are less followed, you may not have any resolution.

    You can reclaim some of these if the people are finding them through a search engine. Use pay per click advertising, such as Google's adwords, and set it so that it shows your ad when someone enters search term of the incorrect spelling of your company name. The competitor's site will pop up in the search, but your ad will pop up in advertisement space. Make a special ad that says that you are the one.

    You can also reclaim some of these by inserting the incorrect spelling into your site (meta tags, etc.), this way you may show up also in the natural search listing (though it would be unlikely that you would get a listing above the competitor).

    Oh, this brings a suggestion for anyone else who is following this - when you register a web site, get as many common mis-type versions as you can. Web addresses are cheap, and prevent things like this from happening.
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