A funny thing happened over the course of 4 years…LakePlace.com morphed from just a website into a website and a brand name. Sure, anyone can make that assertion about their business, but the proof is in the pudding, right? Well, here it is:
Search Term: LakePlace.com
LakePlace.com has two competitors bidding on the search term “LakePlace.com.” These are competitive websites trying to trick or attract people searching on Google for LakePlace.com. (Many Internet users type a URL directly into the Google search box when they are looking for a website rather than typing it directly into their browser).
You can look at this from a couple of view points. It is somewhat flattering to see that other companies think so highly of you that they would bid on your trademarked name…and on the other hand, it is disappointing to see , just to get a visitor to their website.
My advice to companies that do this type of thing: If you work hard and provide a great product, people might just start visiting your website without the need to trick them.
Here is what Google has to say about this practice:
For fun, I decided to look up some other brand names (companies we look up to) to see if they are encountering the same type of problem…here are the results:
1. Search Term: Zillow.com
Zillow has a couple of businesses (in one search, they actually had four) using their brand name to trigger an advertisment…
2. Search Term: EdinaRealty.com
Edina Realty also has some competitors bidding on their business name. A while back, for this practice. The lawsuit did go to court, but last I heard, it was settled out of court. The case was a little different because the competitor was actually using the words “Edina Realty” in the triggered advertisement.
3. Search Term: Redfin.com
This one kind of surprised me. I would have thought that some other discount outfits would have bid on the Redfin name. For those of you unfamiliar with Redfin, they were recently featured in a controversial 60 Minutes segment.
At LakePlace.com, we like to compare our statistics (visits, pageviews, revenue, costs) to Redfin (privately held) because their model is similar to ours…well, their business model is not similar to ours - in that LakePlace.com’s mission is to help both real estate professionals and buyers/sellers (where as Redfin competes will real estate professionals), but both companies have placed all of the eggs in the Internet basket…and that is a big thing to have in common.
Redfin makes a practice of publishing their internal numbers from time to time - and we thank them for that -=)
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Posted on May 17th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: FSBO
