At Shop.org meeting, search engine marketing is never a dull topic
Search engine marketing is clearly the number one marketing tactic for online retailers. So it’s not surprising that passions about the subject run high. The Shop.org Annual Summit breakout session Search Engine Marketing Update attracted a roomful of retailers, many of whom expressed varying levels of frustration at the different participants in search engine marketing.
Several expressed anger at affiliates who compete against retailers for bidding on retailers’ names in search engine results. “I am the brand, I own the trademark. It’s a problem dealing with affiliates who do predatory bidding,” said Kathleen Stockham, director of advertising for Office Depot Inc., one of the panelists. Even though Office Depot, like many retailers, prohibits affiliates from bidding on the Office Depot brand, “there are some affiliates that it doesn’t matter to,” she said. Policing how affiliates are using the brand is time consuming. “You extend that across all Office Depot’s brands, and you could spend all day swatting at them,” she said.
While some in the audience believe it is up to the search engines to prohibit affiliates from bidding on such words, others said there’s not much they can do. “To expect the search engine to police this is not their jurisdiction,” said Nick Swinmurn, founder and chairman of shoe retailer Zappos.com and another panelist.
The audience also engaged in a lively discussion about what constitutes paid inclusion in search results. Beverly Thomas, senior attorney, Internet advertising programs for the Federal Trade Commission and the third panelist, outlined the commission’s stand that paid rankings must be clearly identified as such and that paid inclusion should be identified as paid “to the extent that it affects the rankings.” “At the FTC, the basic concept is that consumers should know when they are being solicited,” she said.
But then an audience member pointed out that search engine optimization is a form of paid search results, it’s just that the page optimizer, rather than the search engine, is the one getting paid. “There’s no such thing as free search,” said an audience member. “You’re paying someone to be included or you’re paying someone to optimize your pages.”
While there was no conclusion to that debate, Matthew Berk, panel moderator and senior analyst at Jupiter Research, said, “It’s a very interesting rat’s nest, especially for marketers.”
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