Although most SEO tips out there need to be taken with a pinch of salt, most search engines (and people) think of your page title as a one line summary of your page. It's amusing to see our "national" dailies scrambling over to primarily associate themselves with cricket, Bollywood, and suchlike. Sample it for yourself...
Hindustan Times wants to associate itself with the "Latest news on India,Cricket,Bollywood & Business"
Times of India wants to associate itself with "Breaking news, views, reviews, cricket from across India."
View the source and look at the meta tags...
Hindustan Times has "Vir Sanghvi" up there in the list of it's meta tags! WTF?
And, as expected: "ht,hindustan times, aaj tak, rediff, indian express, zee, ndtv, indya, star tv" in the meta tags of the Times of India!
Actually this is not something new -- lots of companies bid for it's competitor's AdWords. Till some time back, a Google search on MakeMyTrip would give a Yatra ad on the top, a search on Yatra would give a Cleartrip ad on top, and a search on Cleartrip would give a Yatra ad on top (or some other combination like that)!
Actually, Cleartrip is now a registered trademark. So, as per Google's policies, competitors are no longer allowed to place ads against the brand.
ReplyDeleteToo bad, I suppose, for those Delhi companies that completely lack any ethics...
Hi Nandz,
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing about this.
What you point out indeed appears to be an unethical practice engaged in by a competitor.
Our Search Engine Marketing team shall take the necessary steps and notify Google
Regards,
Geeta Eral
Makemytrip.com
Email: Geeta.Eral@Makemytrip.com