ArticleSnatch Blog

You are browsing the archives of search optimization.

The 11th Circuit Court of Georgia ruled the use of others’ trademarks in meta tags infringes trademark laws, according to North American Medical Corp. v. Axiom Worldwide, Inc.

How this eventually gets applied across the country remains to be seen but it is the start of legal interpretation of search optimization. How far this can be pushed is what our industry should be thinking about right now.

If applied to the use of trademarked keywords used in Google - though there is another ruling that supported Google’s method - could make things hard for non-branded companies who produce products basically known by the trademarked term like Kleenex etc.

Funny Google just launched the ability to use trademarked keywords in the UK last week.

Eric Goldman’s Technology and Marketing Law blog gives some insight into the ruling.

“Unfortunately, it’s hard to parse this case because the court is imprecise about which metatags were used. I’ve looked through the defendant’s appellate brief and they don’t clarify the technology for the court at all–I’m wondering if any of the attorneys involved in this case know that there are multiple types of metatags. We only have the following three facts to work with:

* Axiom included competitive trademarks in the metatags
* Axiom appeared as the second organic search result in Google for the trademarked terms (following the plaintiff, which was #1 in the search results)
* The trademarked terms appeared in the search results descriptions”

Since there is always the possibility Google took the description from other sources apart from the site’s description the ruling seems to be potentially overruled if further challenged. As Goldman mentions the “court does not exhibit any understanding of anchor text or the fact that Google sometimes automatically assembles search result descriptions using third party content (such as DMOZ)”

This one could have major impact on all levels of search marketing, I wonder how Google plans to react to this interpretation of their actions. Funny the results in Yahoo or Microsoft were not mentioned…..

Search optimization and advertising is gaining its rightful place among marketers’ tools. In today’s Search Ads column, “Microsoft-Yahoo: Search Marketing Trends That Matter,” Matt Spiegel shares eight trends that will change your company’s search engine strategies.

As some SEW readers know, some of our experts and bloggers have taken up the challenge to implement a best practices marketing campaign for Reservation Road, a movie released October 19. Carrie Hill and Debby Richman decided to push all the search optimization buttons possible – even with a limited time frame and zero dollars. [...]

Let’s be blunt: Getting your products listed in the shopping search engines is a tedious, cyclical, pain-in-the-butt process. But it’s also necessary if you want to get the most out of online retail. At the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York, those in the know spill what they know about shopping search optimization.
The [...]

The concept of something being undetectable to search engines, like attempts to game them for better rankings, became a topic again after V7N announced a link buying service that would make such links impossible to detect.
In looking at the service offered by V7N, it appears they plan to make money the old fashioned way: by [...]