|
In an increasingly cutthroat search industry, it’s difficult to imagine gaining a foothold against the competition. It can be said that creative and innovative new methods to deliver relevant results are highly prized by any startup search company looking to tackle the big boys.
However, it seems that “creative” thinking may have landed Search Engine newcomer Ansearch in the middle of a growing scandal that has spread beyond the Australian borders.
Registering domain names such as: foxsport.com.au, matsushita.com.au, mcaffee.com.au, microsoftoffice.com.au, mozilla.com.au, msnmessenger.com.au and sportsillustrated.com.au not to mention hundreds more, has precipitated a growing tide of discontent with the new engine.
Ansearch, a newcomer to the Australian search scene, launched their branded beta search engine last November 30th with hopeful plans of a commercial launch & monetarisation this March.
With the test engine (Mysearch.com.au) fielding initial results, Ansearch released the commercial interface in December 2004. Ansearch promised to offer users a different perspective on finding results, seeking to deliver sites based on reputation, relevance and credibility and many businesses began to see traffic from the new engine.
In fact, Ansearch / Mysearch began to attract enough attention that an offer to purchase the service by Optum Limited (ASX: OPM) was announced September 28th 2004. The agreement to acquire the company was however, conditional upon meeting several performance milestones with increasing bonuses for meeting these targets. Upon satisfaction of precedent conditions, Ansearch was required to complete three additional goals with an end target of 600 thousand unique visitors.
Although, it is unclear exactly where things began to go wrong for the Ansearch group, it can be speculated that the money involved was an exceptionally strong motivator to reach the performance targets set by Optum at all costs.
Things began to unravel when it was noted that Ansearch was caching websites and displaying copyright company information with an altered form and URL, producing duplicate content in other search engines. It should be noted that every major search engine, Google included, does caching, however Ansearch was allowing their three feature website pages (cached, details & sitemap) to be indexed by key search providers.
In the Google Search Engine case, cached pages are protected by using the robots exclusion protocol, however Ansearch follows a method that allows their cached pages to be indexed by other search engine robots. When these results are found in other search engines and followed by the user, monitored traffic seems to be funnelled in through Ansearch's own click monitoring scripts on the way to the expected site. It would appear that this significantly skews the traffic results that have been presented by Ansearch.
Concerned business owners started to worry about the ethics of Ansearch’s methodology, wondering what would happen if the Ansearch pages turned up ahead of genuine company sites in mainstream search engine listings. As it turns out, there is every reason to be upset. In many cases Ansearch pages are turning up ahead of the websites they are supposed to be indexing promoting Ansearch in the results of key search providers. However, duplicate listings in the results of major search engines are apparently just the tip of the iceberg.
Further investigation into the practices at Ansearch, reveal that a significant portion of traffic seems to originate from expired or unregistered domain names bought by Ansearch or entities affiliated with them.
Again, this practice is nothing new and many sites use this technique to capture excess traffic. However, in legitimate use and for both ethical and legal reasons, most companies will steer well clear of registering the names of competitors and those well protected by strong copyright or trademarks.
Considering the above, it is alarming to scrutinize the dangerous path followed by Ansearch in registering domain names that are misleadingly similar to well known brand names. In many cases, if not all, such misleading domain names registered to Ansearch redirected visitors to Ansearch result pages, a practice commonly known as cyber squatting.
Cyber squatting can be defined as “registering, selling or using a domain name with the intent of profiting from the goodwill of someone else's trademark.”
Although, cases of cyber squatting are less common today since most businesses are decidedly more “internet savvy”, Ansearch’s methodical approach to registering the names resulted in a lengthy list. Their list includes:
- Well-known brands: australiaairlines.com.au, bandaid.com.au
- Celebrities: tomcruise.com.au, pamelaanderson.com.au
- Newspapers: usatoday.com.au, thesydneymorningherald.com.au
- Television: abcnews.com.au, australiaidol.com.au, sesamestreet.com.au
- Well known websites: dmoz.com.au, teoma.com.au, allrecipes.com.au
- And even direct Australian competitors: webwombats.com.au, stickybeeks.com.au
(For additional listings see below.)
It seems that little is sacred at the company headquarters, they even had the nerve to register fairtrading.com.au, a department of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) with offices in each state of Australia who, “promotes competition and fair trading ”, along with a number of popular government department names.
Unsurprisingly, when this discovery began to appear in discussions on well-known industry websites such as Search Engine Forums and Search Engine Watch, Ansearch began to quietly redirect hundreds of domains. As of today, visitors to most of the domains registered to Ansearch entities such as Goodbrook Holdings Ltd. will be redirected to an ‘error page’ presenting a basic search form. Without prior knowledge of Ansearch tactics, it would be difficult for the average user - if not impossible, to determine their original use.
Perhaps it may have seemed laughable at the time for Ansearch to have the ability to register a domain name such as fairtrading.com.au, but registering hundreds of domain names in a “fit of youthful exuberance” during its launch phase last year, as recently stated by CEO Dean Jones, is certainly no laughing matter now. News of their activities is featuring in well known publications such as Australian IT (News Interactive, the digital division of News Limited) - “Searcher twists name rules” March 22nd 2005.
Several weeks ago, Ansearch was a willing participant in online communities, introducing their new Australian search engine and requesting feedback at forums such as Search Engine Watch.
However, as evidence and questions about their actions continue to pile up, they have become disturbingly silent.
From an International standpoint - recently, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) - published a case book on resolving domain name disputes, which indicated that “to convince a WIPO panellist that someone is cyber squatting on your brand, you need to show that the disputed domain name is identical or confusingly similar to your trade mark.” It is doubtful that Ansearch will be able to retain (nor should they) many of the domains that they’ve registered.
With a full investigation by auDA underway and the legal departments of various large companies focusing on Ansearch and its actions, the potentially bright future of a new search engine is turning decidedly sour.
The fact that Ansearch and its subsidiaries were able to register so many domain names over such a short period of time points to a serious problem in the current Australian domain registration system. On the surface it would appear to be impossible for an entity to register huge numbers of domains without the cooperation of the registrar or registrars used. Evidently however, despite auDA policy Ansearch has managed to do just that.
Currently, companies or individuals have 4 possible courses of action if they feel a domain name is in dispute.
- Approach the company you feel is encroaching on your trademark or business name and hope to resolve the situation amicably. As Ansearch is quick to point out they are open to such approaches.
- Seek legal advice through a reputable legal firm that is well versed in the intricacies of domain name registration.
- Use the auDA domain name dispute resolution agencies as listed on the auDA site at a cost of approximately $1,500.
- Live with the situation and do nothing
Relevant links:
Ansearch commerical launch press release .
Offer to purchase Ansearch by Optum Ltd.
Ansearch ASX press release & performance milesones
Definition of Cybersquatting
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)
Searcher Twists Name Rules - Australian IT
Search Engine Watch Forums - relevant thread
World Intellectual Property Organisation
WIPO case book - Resolving Domain Name Disputes
Australian Search Engine in Dodgy Domain Registration Scandal
Strange names registered by Ansearch associated entities (chiefly Goodbrook Holdings Ltd.)
|
