Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : BlueHost.com: advertising using OUR company names!

[ServerSean]

I find this shocking. I open Google and type in my company name - what comes up in the sponsored links at the side? take a look for yourselves:

Ikhost Web Hosting
Host 6 domains on 1 account,
200GB web space, 2000GB Bandwidth
www.BlueHost.com

So I thought okay weird, may be some weird glitch - so I try another provider that I know of:

Vexxhost Web Hosting
Bluehost Reliable Web Hosting,
200GB web space, 2000GB Bandwidth.
www.BlueHost.com

This is unacceptable that a company is stealing the names of others for advertising purposes.

I'm sure many of you would agree, but I was wondering what the thoughts of others are on this. Does anyone know how to stop this sort of thing going on?

[marksy]

Start clicking on the ad - make it unprofitable

[steven-v]

Welcome to old news, here is bunch of resellers from cj.com using our company names at Adwords for years... Nothing you can do about, unless you want to waste your time and money to sue them.

[David]

Originally Posted by steven-v

Welcome to old news, here is bunch of resellers from cj.com using our company names at Adwords for years... Nothing you can do about, unless you want to waste your time and money to sue them.

Actually, google will quite promptly remove them with any notice filed to their abuse/support team. They'll also go quite a bit further if it persists.

[jpetersen]

Both bluehost and lypha have our name targeted, but I can't say it bothers me too much anymore. I was however a bit surprised to see bluehost actually advertise our name in their ad title, as if we're somehow affiliated with them (which we're not - never have been, never would be).

But, what I've come to realize is this: people who want cheap webhosting (and I don't just mean cheap in terms of the price) are going to purchase just that, so I doubt they're getting many people, if any, that would have signed up with us anyway. Besides, I've read their reviews on here and had the pleasure of taking calls from their customers :-) I think I'll leave it at that.

Don't let it get to you. Continue to be the best at what you do and you'll have your own loyal customer base.

[keliix06]

They don't have any ads with your name in the title. The title of their ad is set to

{keyword} Web Hosting

Google automatically inserts the keyword the user searched with. And unless your name is trademarked you'll have a tough time getting Google to disable their keyword bids.

[jpetersen]

I'll be the first to admit I don't understand Google's AdWords very well. When searching for my company, I see 2 hosts' ads appear - 1 with our name, and 1 without. I don't get why 1 has never shown our name, but the other always has, especially considering there is only 1 word in the search term.

edit: I think I see what you're saying. The companies who advertise select keywords to use, and when those terms are searched for, the keyword appears in the ad title. It's not that they directly purchased an ad with the company name, but an ad that would place the keyword in the title. The end result is still exactly the same, so it's really no different either way.

[Anky]

I've seen this happen quite a bit and just recommend to click on the ad every now and then

[ylsy]

Do note that it might not be BlueHost.com who purchased these Google ads!! With AdWords you can send the visitor to a different URL than the one displayed in the ads, and many affiliates use this to pretend the ads are from the hosts themselves.

Now go back to Google, search for your business name again, right click on the ads, select "Copy Link Location" (assuming you are using Firefox), and then paste into notepad for the Google AdWords tracking URL.

The actual URL AdWords will redirect to is after the "q=" parameter -- which is NOT BlueHost.com. Actually if you try to visit that URL, it will redirect you to a Commission Junction tracking site first, and then redirect again to BlueHost.com. It is basically someone trying to buy cheap traffic from Google search result, and hoping to convert them into affiliation sales...

Clicking on the ads? By all means! I don't think it will cost BlueHost any money, but it might hurt those who try to game the system.

[page-zone]

That's pretty interesting. It looks like google will be getting a letter from me.
http://www.page-zone.com/trademark.jpg

The odd thing is if you type the search term along WITH "web hosting" nothing comes up. Just type the company name and they use it for an ad for another company. What did google's motto USED to be?

[Zenutech]

I've filled a complaint this morning with google.
The lyphia thing you can't do much about, but I believe it is unaceptable that bluehost uses our company name in their advertisements. I believe it's both false advertising, and in a lot of cases trademark infridgments.

[page-zone]

Bluehost has a history of search engine cheating IMO. It wasn't too long ago I discovered what appears to be them creating doorway pages w/ content from other hosting companies and meta refresh code to their site.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=544666

[Pat H]

Interesting, if you look at the source you will see:

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=L&ai=Bis...GyAEB&num=2&q=http://www.hosting-review-center.com...g/hosting.aspx&usg=__PFkR45PEDOH1B9MtxjRDIuPyftA=

Looks like an affiliate payout scheme of some sort... and a fair amount of hosting companies are being used in the process.

[David]

It appears that it is in fact being propagated by hosting-review-center.com and isn't bluehost directly.

Time for some takedown notices -- they've even been advertising under my measly 'ol name.
Please note that hosting-review-center.com is also hosted at GoDaddy, wouldn't hurt to send some abuse notices to GoDaddy (albeit not sure what to file them under other than trademark infringement) as they like to play internet police.

At any rate if google allows this sort of crap to persist indefinitely I'm going to switch to live.com just to spite them Overall it's a better site anyways.

[Martie]

Yes this stuff happens all the time :-((
It is annoying though when co. purposely USE your own co. name AS the keyword.
I just checked hostcaters and see: icheaphosting.com as well as bluehost.
Errrr!!