Earlier this year, I was asked to work on a legal case involving a couple of finance sector companies where one was accused by the other of trademark infringement where the defendant’s website abruptly began ranking for the plaintiff’s service mark.
The only trouble was, the unique phrase was in no way associated with the defendant’s website. In this article, I’ll discuss a unique functionality of Google’s ranking algorithm.
What I expected to find in this case was quite different from what I ultimately found. Most search ranking factors are very straightforward.
SEO is an arena where the logical principle of Occam’s razor (“the simplest explanation is usually the right one”) is typically present in formulating explanations.
For instance, if a page ranks for a unique keyword, that keyword will be found within a page’s HTML code such as the title, body text, image alt text – or, failing that, the keyword might be present in links pointing to the page.
But, this case was to prove to be a rare instance wherein media linking the unique, branded phrase, was simply… absent.
The case overview
The scenario was quite unique in a few ways.
Some years ago, the plaintiff had dreamed up a sort of catchphrase that they used in traditional media to promote their business.
The catchphrase combined a word closely related to their business and products with a word that was not traditionally related to their industry.
They neglected to promote the catchphrase online, and as it was very...
Read Full Story: https://searchengineland.com/the-case-of-the-stealth-google-bomb-388753
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