Google expands sales of company names

Google has expanded its sale of business names as keywords to firms' competitors, it has been revealed.

In an article for Business Week, Michael Orey reveals that this comes despite legal action being taken against the search engine by Rescuecom over allegations that the tactic could confuse customers.

He adds that the sales have proved "controversial" in Europe and the US but that from June 4th marketers in some 200 countries will have the chance to purchase their competitor's trademarks to use as keywords, leading to sponsored advertisements being displayed.

Mr Orey explains that this means Honda could purchase Toyota as a keyword so that any internet user searching for Toyota will see a sponsored advertisement along with their search engine optimisation (SEO) results.

However, the keywords will not be displayed in the advertisements themselves and he claims that Google must be "confident it is operating on sound legal footing".

Meanwhile, SEOmoz's Randfish has asked whether Google's efforts to compete with Twitter Facebook and Wolfram Alpha search could change SEO.

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