Importance Of Googling Your Company Name
When was the last time you did a search for yourself or your company name? If you haven’t done so or it has been a while then you might want to get yourself into the habit of checking on a regular basis. Due to the bad economy and the viral nature of the internet people and companies alike are engaging in unethical marketing practices in Google and throughout the internet.
At WebDuck Designs we look up our name on a regular basis. I would like to share 3 situations we have come across while performing our searches.
- The first situation involved finding our name WebDuck Designs and references to website maintenance and hosting plans on a Denver Colorado based web development company’s website. There was nothing bad or slandering on the pages but it did require some investigating to find out exactly who was publishing our name on the internet and why. To make a long story short, the owner of the company was planning on naming his company WebDuck Designs and didn’t realize the name was taken until after his website was built. Once he saw that we existed, he changed his name to Everdream Web and thought he changed all references of WebDuck Design over to Everdream Web. After a lengthy and enjoyable conversation everything was worked out and there was absolutely no malicious intent. Since then Allen at EverDream web has updated to a new website that really shows off their professionalism and development abilities. Although we met Allen through a rather strange set of circumstances we are very happy we did.
- The second situation involves a high school web development class out of a state in the Midwest US. I don’t remember exactly where they were out of but what I did find was our website and our website content on a different server under a different domain name. Apparently one of the assignments for the class was to create a CSS based search engine optimized website. One of the students decided that it was easier to just use someone else’s existing website instead of building their own. That existing website was WebDuck Designs. There was no malicious intent on anyone’s part; however by copying our website we ran the potential risk of Google thinking we have duplicate content. We made a phone call to the school and eventually spoke to the teacher and the website was removed. No harm was done but the potential for future issues was there. All things considered I guess it could have been worse. The high school kid could have outsourced his homework assignment to India.
- The last example is a bit more unethical and from our view was done out of malicious intent. There is a company called Volusion with locations in California and Texas. Volusion specializes in ecommerce solutions and instead of getting business on their own abilities they decided to target WebDuck Designs clients. Clients come and go and no web development company can make everyone happy however for a company to specifically market to another company’s clients or potential clients we see as a shady and unethical tactic. Volusion is currently (July 2010) paying for pay per click advertisements on Google and targeting the keywords “WebDuck” and “WebDuck Designs”. In the 10 plus years that we have been in business we have never seen anyone pull something like this before. Maybe I should be flattered by the fact that they are targeting us or be happy that we are considered a “threat” to their business. Unfortunately there is not much that we can do about this unethical marketing strategy other than file a formal complaint with Google since their ads technically go against Google’s pay per click parameters. Only time will tell if Google or Volusion will remove the ads. I can tell you that in the next couple of weeks WebDuck Designs will be signing up for a Volusion ecommerce store and doing a complete unbiased review.
On a final note, looking up WebDuck Designs brings up our clients, inbound links, and one of two pay per click ads sponsored by Volusion. Doing a search for Volusion is a different story. To save you some time we’ve compiled some links that we found while researching the company that has been targeting WebDuck Designs.
http://andrewbleakley.com/blog/big-commerce-vs-volusion/
http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster-forum/threads/97854-Volusion-Servers-Down-Again
http://andybeard.eu/503/volusion-review-and-suggestions.html
http://chick2geek.blogspot.com/2009/10/volusions-crash-n-burm.html
http://www.dotcult.com/is-your-site-sending-spam-thousands-of-volusions-sites-might-be
http://www.web-hosting-top.com/web-hosting/web-hosting-top.volusion.com/type/add-review
http://www.wiredatom.com/blog/2006/01/15/my-issues-with-volusions-import-feature/
Be sure to do your due diligence and Google your company name often. Contact our staff to discuss any questions or concerns about what you find.
