Comments on: Scraping SEMPO for Keywords

By: Ryan Lash

Ryan Lash — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 18:01:28 +0000

This could be one of the reasons my firm is not (yet) a SEMPO member .

When you are amongst a very vocal community, flying below the radar can have it’s benefits. Oh and running an ethical business always helps.

My clients on the other hand, sometimes they have their own opinions on these matters, and the ‘customer is always right’.

-Ryan

By: Proof Positive That Google Uses Page Content in AdWords Quality Scoring - KoMarketing Associates

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:46:11 +0000

[...] We were bidding on a series of brand names in order to drive people to a site to learn more about the brands in question (this was not a bid-against-the-competitor campaign). [...]

By: Nick Stamoulis

Nick Stamoulis — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 14:04:03 +0000

Simon,

No need to apologize. Everyone has their opinion and not everyone will agree on topics such as this. That is why blogs are such a great marketing vehicle.

The bottom line is that we are in the exciting era of web 2.0+. Discussions such as this amongst leaders in the industry are what will make us all better marketers.

Thank you all for your feedback.

Nick

By: simon heseltine

simon heseltine — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 01:44:11 +0000

Tim,
Thanks for the comment. I guess I should apologize, as it seems like a lot of people aren’t getting the point that I was driving at. Frankly I don’t care that he was running his ads against competing brands, as a few have pointed out, that’s a valid strategy that quite a few people employ in many different industries (including search engines themselves). What did get me was that he’s a member of an organization that was created to further the aims of search marketers, and he’s used that organization to further his aims at the expense of the other members. That’s why I was looking for non-SEMPO members to see if he had expanded beyond just the SEMPO members. Had I found some non-SEMPO members, I may have done a post on his display URL, but probably not.

For the record, the big tip-off for me was Innovectra. They don’t offer SEM services, so he wouldn’t have got their name anywhere else.

By: Tim Saccone

Tim Saccone — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:21:06 +0000

Very interesting discussion. Frequent reader; first post. I should first say that I have and continue to employ similar competitive PPC strategies with many of my clients. I don’t think that the strategy that Nick Stamoulis is using lends to an ethical issue here and/or is a sleazy tactic. This strategy can essentially be seen in any vertical where there is legitimate competition – SEM or brick & mortar. It’s rampant in so many verticals; travel, car insurance, you name it. Granted, when you start bidding on Fortune 500 brand keywords, their corporate deep pockets & lawyers quickly make themselves visible.

Any opportunity that you are given/can create to position your brand in the same line of eyesight as your competitors, it’s certainly to your advantage. At a busy intersection off the interstate, would you not position your restaurant with a McDonalds, Papa Johns and Burger King? – If nothing else just to give the customer a choice. It’s entirely possible that a visitor obviously recognizes Brand A but they’re simply looking for a less expensive alternative in Brand B, C, D or E. There’s nothing deceptive or unethical here; this PPC strategy is available to everyone in the marketplace. It seems to be Business 101 to me.

By: simon heseltine

simon heseltine — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:12:56 +0000

Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but given that I didn’t click on it, I didn’t cost him a penny. I grabbed the destination URL from the first one I found, to check out his site, then for the other searches that I conducted I just verified whether or not his ad was on the page, and that it was the same copy each time.

By: Gidseo

Gidseo — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 16:25:16 +0000

A question for Simon and/or Nick.
How much do you think it cost Nick whilst you and the rest of SEMPO did their research?

By: Buying Nick Stamoulis

Buying Nick Stamoulis — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:31:02 +0000

[...] on Nick Stamoulis, but this time it’s not really about him. In the comments on my post on Scraping SEMPO for keywords he pointed me to a positive article on his bidding strategy, and invited me, and everyone else to [...]

By: Andy Komack

Andy Komack — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 16:51:09 +0000

Great post! It’s funny, because when I first saw that Nick was bidding on my company (KoMarketing Associates), I was flattered because I thought our PPC excellence was being recognized! Of course, I then looked deeper and saw that we were not the only company. I did not take it as far as looking at the SEMPO list – so thanks for going that extra step. I personally am not offended. We bid on competitors’ brand on behalf of our clients very frequently. I do not view this as spam myself. We are just pointing out that there are other alternatives out there for a particular service. Not only do we get some traffic for our clients, more importantly we can compare brand recognition between our clients and their competitors.

By: Laura Mandzok

Laura Mandzok — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:56:39 +0000

In my experience, if the Google ad had been up there for some time obviously violating editorial guidelines, then the ad probably didn’t receive very much exposure or traffic. I’ve had ads for very small clients sitting in editorial review on Google for months, whereas the larger (read higher spending) client’s ads are reviewed within minutes of posting.

Plus, you can always point out these violations to Google. I’ve found this to be a really effective strategy in eliminating spammy competition in AdWords.