Playing tag
Tags and text embedded in a Web site can draw traffic away from your business and to a competitor. So when it comes to protecting your brand, you're it.
Meta tags are especially effective at diverting traffic. Meta tags, text within HTML code that helps describe the page, are invisible to Web users, but search engines use them to determine what's on the page. Although a simple coding trick, meta tags can be especially damaging, says Todd Bransford, director of product marketing at Cyveillance, an online brand management company.
"Let's say you're doing an offline advertising campaign: You're spending $20 million trying to generate response. A certain percentage of people who respond to that advertising revenue choose to do that online," he says. "If they go online to try and find the site and end up on your competitor's site who meta-tagged you, it's really a double whammy. Not only did it hurt you on your return on your own marketing investments, but you also helped out a competitor."
Verizon has indeed found its competitors using meta tags to lure customers to their own sites. The company simply asks them to stop, and no one has ever refused. "They know that they shouldn't be doing it, especially in a commercial context," says Deutsch .
Direct competitors aren't the only ones that use meta tags. If a company or product name is popular, some sites will want to capitalise on thatâ€"no matter what they're selling. Though these sites aren't stealing potential customers, companies should still be concerned about the content their names are being associated with, warns Bransford. Your target audience could be landing on sites that they don't want to seeâ€"or that they shouldn't see. For Cyveillance client Nintendo, Pokémon characters are a prime target for meta-tagging. By embedding the Pikachu name into their Web sites with meta tags and hidden text, a variety of sites hope to attract eyeballs. Disturbingly, many porn sites are meta-tagging using Nintendo words, Bransford says. Kids "go to a search engine and wind up on a porn site," he says. Exactly the kind of thing Nintendo doesn't need.
How to fight back? It's easy enough to locate some meta taggers. Just type your brand name into a search engine and see what sites come up. Verizon uses Cyveillance to track and analyze abuses of its name in meta tags and hidden text (Cyveillance also identifies unauthorised uses of Verizon's logos on Web sites). Under trademark law, which generally applies to meta tags, if the use of a trademark or logo is likely to cause consumer confusion or, for famous marks, dilute the trademark or tarnish the owner's reputation, it's probably a case of infringement.
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