[CARPET KNIGHTS]

what is the legallity of purchasing domain names which are the names of other companies? or even buying them and forwarding them to your own website!

Cheers Goron

[garyj]

Well, my local competitors each use the town name + carpet cleaning as their business name, one has added & upholstery, but neither have bought the domain names, so I have.

If they were called 'Knights Cleaning' then I think I would be on sticky ground, but if they were called Bodmin Carpet Cleaning I would say go for it.

Does that make sense?

[garyj]

Just to add, I do use my company name on the page and if someone phoned and asked if I was Bodmin Carpet Cleaners i would say no, Im a carpet cleaner in Bodmin. Mis-representation would soon see you in court.

[CARPET KNIGHTS]

Thanks Gary

[John Kelly]

Funny you should mention that. We have just been informed that someone has tried to register all the other available restormate url's.

[spencer davies]

I have noticed a lot of people buying urls with town names - areas to jump up in the listings, for example croydon-carpet-and-upholstery cleaners, I can't help feeling that Google will wise up to this and in time we may see this type of site falling away.


S

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Guys

Spencer, why should Google penalise sites which have key words in their title, it's always been done by internet savvy companies, e.g Ryanair, Easy Jet etc .

They are also likely to have relevant content and would therefore be encouraged.

As for purchaing other companies names I think they would have to prove they have suffered a  loss, which would be difficult, it would also be difficult to lay claim to a title like National carpet cleaners for example.

Cheers

Doug

[spencer davies]

When your company trading name is, say for example, Fibre Fresh and your URL is lewes-carpet-cleaners-east-sussex.com, what relation does the URL have to your company trading name? none at all, the ONLY reason you chose to have a url like that, is to hike up the rankings for a particular search.

Regards




S

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Spencer

Do Google care if a company  are called Fibre Fresh or lewes-carpet-cleaners-east-sussex.

I have an online name for my company which is different to its original off line name, nothing wrong in that .

Having carpet cleaning in the URL is just another way of boosting rankings.

Cheers

Doug

[spencer davies]

No one knows if Google care, I don't think they do at the moment, but they may in the future. I am not saying there is anything wrong with the practice, but if I were Google, I might look at it as 'cheating', rather than earning your ranking.

Regards



S

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Spencer

I have been under this sort of 'attack' in Essex for years but I'm still numero uno, it's all part of the fun.

Seriously though Google are a bit more sophisticated than to allow the name to count for too much but some of the other search engines  :

Cheers

Doug

[spencer davies]

Sorry Doug,

I didn't want to appear to be on the attack, I spend lots of time on our sites making sure we are #1 in Sussex, with the odd site popping up using this system, which do seem to drop off after a while.

Each to their own, we are all doing the same thing, making a living. There is a lot of speculation as to Google's preferences, none of which seem to have a great deal of fact attached, if total relevance is really their mantra, then I think we may see some changes.


Regards



S

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Spencer

I certainly didn't mean to suggest you were attacking me, you have always behaved in a positive manner which is what this forum is all about.

I mentioned it because in Essex we seem to have the most competitive internet after London and all sorts of different angles are used to gain an advantage, it keeps everyone on their toes.

Cheers

Doug

[davep]

Found this earlier..


Pay attention to keyword inclusion and placement. Keywords may no longer be the sole determining factor of a site’s ranking, but they’re still pretty important. The most useful places to include them are:

    * In your domain name-only make sure your keywords are in the root of your URL, not the stem. For example, if your main keyword phrase is “cell phones,” try to get a domain name such as “www.cell-phones.com” instead of “www.mobileusa.com/cell-phones.” Some search engines will actually penalize sites for including key words in the stem of a URL.

[garyj]

Nice site Dave

[Mark Roberts]

It certainly does you no harm at the moment and as Doug says the difference in Google is minimal from all the sites ive worked on and seen, maybe Spencer is correct and they will try to impose penalty's in the future, actually finding a way to find out would be tricky I would think unless their hand reviewing every site (which they do to some)

Back to Gorons question, be careful if the name is a registered trademark i'd say, Nominet does take domains back all the time for this.

M