Legal Search Battle! - Help!

Hello,

I have a client that lives in a town clled "Lake Wateree". He had me optimize his website and get him first page placement for terms such as "Lake Wateree" & "Lake Wateree Real Estate". It turns out, there is a company called "Lake Wateree Real Estate" who have contacted him and threatened to sue him because he ranks for the keyword phrase "Lake Wateree Real Estate".

He has contacted me for help, hoping I can find him some sort of law somewhere that protects him from this. Can anyone out there help me out with this?

Thanks in advance!:cheers:

 

No one's anchor text is protected by copyright law. Ignore it if the content it points to and the description is original.

 

I agree, however, my client would feel much more comfortable if I could show them some copyright law that pertained to their situation. If you know of any, please let me know.

 

I don't know what to say to that except to tell your client you are certain that is the case and for the proper answer they should consult an attorney.

 

Try this...

http://www.oz.net/~markhow/writing/copy.htm


Use unique descriptions/content and it's all fine in my book.

 

Did they say copyright or trademark? Copyright is for original material, this is too short to be considered for copyright but they can have applied for trademark.
In this case go to http://www.uspto.gov and check for this term under trademark.

 

LOL this sort of crap makes me laugh.
YOU have no direct responsibility for what appears in the SERPs.
Advise you client to seek legal advice, then look into taking action under anti-competition laws.
They cannot sue your client for ranking above them, they could attempt to sue G/Y/M for allowing you to rank above them (ROFL they'd have to have very deep pockets to try that one).

I suppose they'll be sueing DP next because this thread ranks above them

btw on all my searches so far, www dot lakewatereerealestate dot com comes out as the #1 for a search of Lake Wateree Real Estate.

 

I doubt they can do alot about it. You built a site. It happens to be better than theirs.

The search engines results are machine generated and they do not hand manipulate results. So there is not really anyone responsible. They would have to penalize your site or ban it. I doubt they will do this. Otherwise the whole search industry would collapse. Imagine how many people rank (above & below) a brand name of some kind. It is the equivelent to putting a poster next to theirs and yours generating more sales. Pure nonsense.

If those guys had ANY sense they would team up with you and your other clients and consoidate all the top spots. Infact contact them and tell them you will help them.

If it were possible to do anything by law I would be very surprised. Bush is still a "miserable failure" according to google.

 

They can't blame you for ranking for that term. They'd have to ask Google, not you to stop you ranking for that.

On-site you could change all 'Lake Wateree Real Estate' phrases to 'Real Estate in Lake Wateree' or whatever means the same thing. But I doubt they can make you do that.

A young marketing girl from one of our suppliers threatened us to stop supplying us the moment we outrank them for the product name. They were 1 and we were 2. So I stopped SEOing it because it was easier than explaning it to her (not worth the extra traffic anyway)... Some people just don't have a clue.

 

With 935 results for Lake Wateree Real Estate. This thread could well rank above it I would change it to "Lake Wateree Real Estate management" or "Lake Wateree Real Estate property management" - this way you are further from them and have more words to rank with in your title.

Also, which one is your site. Please provide a link here it will be easier for us to see.

 

the site that we have optimized is watereerealty.net

 

I know what I would tell them...but I'm afraid I can't write it here!

 

We had a case almost exactly like this one. "City Realty" decided to complain because we had a link on our homepage called "City Realty" -- they complained that only they could use this term. To keep our client happy, we changed the link back to "City Real Estate" but left all the other SEO work we had done for "City Realty" in place. It made the client happy and made the other company happy.

Basically what we did for our client was say this to them:

Imagine we optimized for "City Real Estate" and a company stated up with that company name -- are you going to back down from them as well? When people do searches for a town they know nothing about, they're not searching for specific companies -- they're searching for specific topics and "City Realty" or "City Real Estate" are valid search topics. Saying only your competitor can rank for those terms is ridiculus.

Our client agreed and all was well. As others have pointed out, you don't control how you rank on Google -- only Google does. And I sincerely doubt your client's competitor can get a registered trademark for those three common words.

BTW -- "City Realty" really hates us... we outrank them for all the money terms but one hehe -- they've resorted to stealing content and artwork from us!

 

As cut throat as real estate is on the internet, if someone could do that, I would start a company called XXX real estate and sue all my competitors for using that name. Tell your friend not to worry about it. This sounds like to me someone is worried about his site and wants to scare him or they are idiots.

 

ain't that the truth
Most of my clients are in the real estate industry and I have seen more empty threads than anywhere. You should ignore those letters and not even respond. If they want, they can go ahead and sue Google like Louis Vuitton did, only difference that their case will never even be heard in court.