There are more instances of job boards screwing over direct employers (their clients, no less) via Google, Yahoo! and others than anyone in our industry should be comfortable with.
Most employers would be appalled at what some boards do in order to hijack their brand in order to drive traffic via search engines.
CareerBuilder is a big offender - directly or indirectly the biggest I’ve seen - and they should be ashamed of themselves.
Check out the link below for the term "Wal-mart jobs," (which receives thousands of searches a month, by the way):
You’ll notice a site in the Sponsored Links on the right called Wizmall. If you click it, you’re taken to a CareerBuilder domain - with no Wal-mart job listings, by the way.
(Snagajob and Vault are offenders on the results page as well, but we’ll get to them in a second.)
Granted, I don’t know the relationship between CareerBuilder and Wizmall. It could simply be an affiliate site gone bad. But the reality is CareerBuilder’s brand is tied to it, and should be held accountable.
Other examples of CareerBuilder dancing the fine line of trademark infringement abound. Do a search for Wells Fargo jobs, National City Bank jobs or Target jobs. Hell, do a search on any company name with "jobs" attached.
Sometimes CareerBuilder can claim the employer as a client. Sometimes not.
Regardless, in most cases, clicking the link will take you to a page with the employer’s listings, but also have these reside with competitive listings too.
Here’s the page on CareerBuilder you’re taken to if you click their ad on Google for "Target jobs."
How do you think Target would feel about this?
If I’m an employer; I’m paying CareerBuilder good money to post jobs and then they’re turning around and leveraging my trademark to drive traffic to my competition (as well as CareerBuilder’s own brand), I’m probably not too happy about it.
And I’m really unhappy if I’m not even a CareerBuilder client.
CareerBuilder’s not alone. Well known sites like Vault, Snagajob, HotJobs and TheLadders are all guilty of similar practices.
I’m not a lawyer, but I know organizations aren’t allowed to list someone else’s copyright in their pay-per-click advertising. Today, someone can buy your company name as a keyphrase, but they cannot legally reference your TM in the advertisement itself.
So, if you’re an employer, do some searches on Google and Yahoo! Who’s hijacking your brand? If you’ve been violated, there is something you can do about it. If you’re a client of the offender, call your sales rep today and tell them to stop.
Then set-up your own pay-per-click account and put your own company in those ad positions.
And if you’re a naughty job board, clean it up. You know who you are.
P.S. In case the ads I reference all start coming down, and the links above don’t show the results they should, I’ve captured screenshots … but I really doubt I’m that influential.
November 3rd, 2005 at 4:36 pm
*** The origin of this anonymous post’s IP address resides at ComputerJobs.com. ***
The title of each adword campaign you mentioned was dynamically inserted.
I would venture to guess that the ads are there the way they are written more out of laziness of someone trying to manage a 50k adwords account than any vast conspiracy.
November 3rd, 2005 at 5:14 pm
Not true.
I don’t disagree that may be the case in some of my examples, but even that doesn’t make it right or limit an employer from taking appropriate action.
And in many cases, CareerBuilder was blatantly stretching the limits. For example, a search for “Wells Fargo jobs” would not have given users a result of “Wells Jobs” dynamically.
They were also clearly using Target’s brand for their own benefit, considering the copyright icon was right by its brand in a search. Unless there’s something I don’t know, that copyright wouldn’t have been inserted dynamically.
And if I’m so off base, then why is CareerBuilder now absent from all the searches I mentioned above?
November 3rd, 2005 at 5:30 pm
*** The origin of this anonymous post’s IP address resides at ComputerJobs.com. ***
To your last point regarding Careerbuilder, there are a million reasons why an ad may not show up at a specific time as you know. The most common reason being ‘daily budgets.’ I doubt they modified their entire ppc program because of your blog.
In your comments you mentioned whether it was right or not. Legally the issue has yet to be settled to my knowledge. Most people in the ppc world agree that targeting by keyword is okay, but including a companies name in the actual ad is where you can run into trouble. Same issues with traditional advertising.
The twist in this instance is that the titles are being dynamically generated - so who in the end is responsible? I personally think it is the advertisers responsibility to moniter their own accounts. You can’t just wordtrack 100,000 keywords and paste them into Google and hope for the best. Although we have all done that to one extent or another I am sure.
About Target, yes they are a pain because Google does have that word TM for ads. I went through the process of talking to my rep to request an exception but then was presented pages of paper work to fill out so no thanks. I have no idea though how the TM works with dynamic keywords.
Lastly, about Wells Fargo Jobs. That is an interesting point. My immediate thought was maybe it passed the character limit, and went to default but then the default was ‘wells jobs.’ That is on the surface does seem strange.
And to end my novel, just my own friendly advice about your Blog, I would suggest tightening the line spacing up a bit, the comments can be hard to read / discern from the other posters.
November 3rd, 2005 at 6:00 pm
First thanks for your thoughtful reply.
My quick response:
1. Time will tell on CB’s ads disappearing. Will they be there tomorrow? We’ll have to see. I REALLY doubt they’ve hit their daily budget limit.
2. It is OK right now to buy “target jobs” as a keyphrase. It’s NOT OK to have “Target” in your actual ad.
3. “Wells Fargo jobs” comes nowhere near the character limit. Something is clearly fishy there.
4. Your 2 cents on spacing is noted.
November 4th, 2005 at 9:52 am
http://www.cenedella.com/stone/archives/2005/11/bloggers_bloggi.html
Joel Cheesman over at Cheesman’s Online Recruitment Blog has a post on “Job boards behaving badly” that’s a little off-base.
Now, I think Joel is just great, and one sharp cookie when it comes to SEO. So I wish he had done a little more research before posting negative stuff about us.
For the record, in order for an employer to use our service, they agree to the following:
“In accepting this Agreement, You also grant TheLadders.com and its affiliates the license to use, reproduce and communicate to the public and display the name and trademark of your organization and your status as a contributor of content to TheLadders.com.”
In addition, I’ve checked with our marketing group and we are not now running any Google ads of the nature he suggests — in fact, I’d asked about a week ago that we look into it because we’re not.
So, legally speaking, Joel’s assertions are not true.
But legalism is one thing. How are we doing at TheLadders.com as good neighbors and partners to our hiring companies?
Well, as it’s always free to fill your $100K+ jobs at TheLadders.com, I think the price is right :) And we provide hiring firms and recruiters with the highest quality candidates because of the unique messaging, function-specific, and screened quality of our 560,000 subscribers.
So I think we’re being a pretty good neighbor, too.
So both legally, and on a “good guy” basis, we’re doing our absolute best here at TheLadders.com to help companies fill thier jobs, and I don’t think Joel’s post treats us fairly.
I’m all in favor of all sorts of different people helping companies fill their positions, but I don’t think it’s fair to try to build up your own business by (incorrectly) tearing down someone elses. That’s just not nice.
So with all that, and knowing that Joel is generally a pretty fair and reasonable guy, I’m hoping he’ll correct this misunderstanding on his blog quickly.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:37 pm
Marc,
Few posts I’ve ever made have been as divisive as this one. Employers loved it; job boards hated it. And that’s fine. My goal was to bring the issue to a head; to make employers and the industry aware of what’s going on.
If you’re customers are cool with it, then more power to you. I think they need new brand managers, but that’s just my opinion.
Your ad I came across was this: http://hrseo.com/img/ladders2.jpg
If you can explain dancing the line of using National City’s brand in your ad, then I’m totally cool.
Feel free to claim dynamically inserting said keywords or the fact that “National city” isn’t necessarily a trademark, etc. All are fair rebuttals.
The question I want to raise is, If you’re National City Bank, how do you feel about TheLadders.com ad. And, assuming Nat’l City is NOT a client, if they called and asked you to stop, what would you do?
- Joel
November 4th, 2005 at 1:26 pm
*** The origin of this anonymous post’s IP address resides at ComputerJobs.com. ***
“Few posts I’ve ever made have been as divisive as this one. Employers loved it; job boards hated it.”
Just to disprove your point, I work at a job board and do not hate your blog post.
November 4th, 2005 at 1:35 pm
Well if I knew who you were!?!?!?!?! All my readers must be CIA operatives or something. In your case, a CIA job board operative, I guess.
November 4th, 2005 at 1:46 pm
*** The origin of this anonymous post’s IP address resides at ComputerJobs.com. ***
Why on earth does it matter who people are?? What does that have to do with anything?!?
If you are so keen on who your readers are, don’t let us post anonymously and see the discussion drop to zero postings.
And you say, “Few posts I’ve ever made have been as divisive as this one. Employers loved it; job boards hated it.”
There’s like three of us posting here.
I think we *WANT* to support you, Joel. The problem is, you make very general blanket statements and when one simply questions you, you tear into them with stuff that sounds like you are always right and everyone else is wrong.
At this point, I personally read your blog to see how wrong I think you are… not for good SEO advice.
November 4th, 2005 at 2:51 pm
As a CareerBuilder employee, I would like to set the record straight. Wizmall is not CareerBuilder domain. We allow other companies to have access to our content. It is called a cobrand. Meaning the site is branded with their logo as well as ours. Some cobrands have no original content and only use ours. Wizmall happens to be an example of this. Moreover, we have over 400 Wal-mart jobs currently listed. From the homepage click on the link, Search By Company in the bottom left corner and then search for Walmart, or simply click on -W-
Happy Hunting!