Protecting the Brands

There's a new sheriff in town. I have discovered the world of keyword hijacking and brand theft by way of search engines, most notably because of the ease of blog indexing.

During my first week at Thompson Group, I was doing some basic research on our trademark names and came away with a chest-thumping roar. A Google Blog Search on Thompson Cigar showed a Spam blog blatantly stealing our trademark. It's obvious that the purpose of this blog is to steal keywords so visitors click on the Google Ads, thus helping the owner profit from the theft. I'm not linking to it because I don't want to give the owner the satisfaction. I also found one using LinenSource. I'm working on an attack plan.

The next violater was sent a warning shot across his blog. This cigar dealer used our trademark name in a blog linked to his home page to attract our search seekers to check out his brands. We'll see how long it takes for those names to disappear on his spam blog.

This is a task I'm going to take seriously. Spam blogs and unscrupulous vendors BEWARE. I'm taking no prisoners to protect our brands.


branding, spam blogs, cigars, trademark, seo, Thompson Cigar