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April 15, 2008
Guaranteeing Page 1 Rankings is SEO Malpractice and "SEO" Trademark?
By Scott Goodyear
An SEO firm in Washington state has been sued over it's practices and may face thousands in penalties and fees according to Search Engine Watch. The core issue had been that their services were not clear, that they made inaccurate guarantees, and if their competitor's post is true, called this service a "scam to avoid".
As I've said in the past, no one controls search engine rankings. There are no guaranteed rankings.
Even Google says this on their own site:
"No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google..."
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291
Yet you will still see advertising like this:
(Screen capture from an advert seen on Search Engine Land.)
While the debate rages that we need or do not need standards, there are others that are trying to trademark the term SEO in order to perhaps force the issue.
Check this page out. This might be link bait, but it might be a response from the person trying to trademark the term "SEO". Either way, you may want to get a few SEO friends together and file a notice of opposition in order to keep this generic word for our industry from becoming a trademark. If it becomes a trademark, this guy has the potential to be the only consulting firm performing the process of "SEO". Imagine trying to advertise or do business if words like "plumbing", "electrician", "accounting", or other terms were trademarked.
← What is this?
Someone can trademark anything he wants. But that doesn't mean it's enforceable. If the person/company being sued can show common usage, the trademark holder has no leg to stand on.
Been there. Done that. There have been some idiots in the gaming community who trademarked certain military terms, then tried to sue. Got the cases thrown out, as the terms were in common usage.
Check with your local intellectual property attorney, but the SEO trademark has a high probability of unenforceability.
Posted by Lin D at May 7, 2008 01:16 AM
This is an important article - and a great reference. Thank you!
I was at a Yahoo seminar a couple of weeks ago in Toronto where they sent their National Director of Search Marketing (among other 'big-wigs'.
My favourite sound byte from Martin Byrne... "We spend our day trying to make sure that the people who guarantee you top placement in organic search results in 5 days...are liars."
Posted by Cheryl at May 7, 2008 12:28 PM
Hi Lin and Cheryl,
Thanks for stopping by and posting. "but the SEO trademark has a high probability of unenforceability" I would hope so. From what you read about computers, high tech, lawsuits, etc. it seems like the courts are slowly starting to understand the internet. While I'm sure it's a bit of sensationalism, you also hear about cases where judges have to have email, web pages, and other technologies explained to them... Let alone some like Senator Ted Stevens who called the internet a "series of tubes" that could get clogged...
"We spend our day trying to make sure that the people who guarantee you top placement in organic search results in 5 days...are liars."
I'm all for stopping spammy techniques from assisting web sites to reach the top but unless you have something on your site that says "site developed by so and so marketing", it's pretty difficult to say whether the promotional activities were performed with the approval of the target site or not.
Small case in point, check out the comments on this post:
http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/2008/04/spamming_sphinn.html
Posted by Scott Goodyear at May 7, 2008 03:33 PM
