When is it wrong to use a competitors brand name?

[LJHopkins]

I recently started with a company who've benefited from using a competitors brand name to explain why theirs is superior.

They're not wrong and neither have they been derogatory, however they have had significant traffic to their website using the competitors branded search terms.

I'm concerned Google will penalise us for this (if so can you point me to case studies/similar examples), or am I worrying unnecessarily?

[Alick300]

Hi Lisa,

If you are asking about Google AdWords campaign then you can use competitors brand as keyword but you can't use in Ad copy but if you are asking about SEO then Google does NOT police this. So in the SEO sense you can use that and you won't be penalize.

What would be the benefit because a great effort required to rank competitors keyword and if your sites getting visits from those searches most probably bounce rate would be very high I have seen this in Adwords campaign by using competitors keywords?

Hope this helps.

Thanks

[LJHopkins]

Hi,

Thanks but I'm referring to content on our website - blogs, landing and webpages.

The benefit is that we attract traffic we wouldn't otherwise be able to do (we're using someone else's well known brand name), then have the opportunity to convert it in to our own sale

Lisa

[Ria_]

In terms of a Google penalty, you have nothing to worry about.

However if you are providing false information about the competitor or writing negatively about them, I'd be more concerned about their response rather than Google's. If not, no worries!

[SanjidaKazi]

It's something I see a lot of. Only thing you have to worry about is annoying you're competitor to the point where they drive your adspend through the roof and try various ways to catch you're traffic too.

We just had a competitor do something similar. Google wont mind much though