What do to about merchant complaints and infringement?

[toykilla]

I just got an email from Prosperent Mike which I think many others are going to get in the future.

A merchant is complaining about my MFPmu site saying that I am illegally portraying myself as them (which I am not). The problem stems from how MFPmu works in building pages based on searches. Someone searched for something that was similar to the merchant name which made a page like this:

mydomain.com/products/similar-to-merchant-name

Obviously this is not domain infringement, and I had nothing to do with the creation of the page they are complaining about. It also cannot be removed since it is a dynamic page and will always be created when someone searches that or clicks through from a search engine.

WTF do we do about this ?

[prosperent brian]

SOme merchants are going to be a bigger pain about that type of thing than others. PM me the merchant and I can talk to them or kick them from the network (unless they are a big performer)

[garydubbs]

with a bit of coding you can blacklist the keyword (merchant name) your end too.

[toykilla]

Just PMed you

[toykilla]

with a bit of coding you can blacklist the keyword (merchant name) your end too.

It is not the merchant name though, just similar.

[bob]

Did you explain to them that it's a store search engine...
and people of the net are entitled to search for what ever they wish. :D

Is it showing products for the merchant name as well.
Does your site look anything at all like theirs?

I'd just ban their name from being searched and swap it in for a different word.
If ($q == "banned merchant name") { $q="A Different Name"; }
Then delete their name from your database.

[AcidRaZor]

Did you explain to them that it's a store search engine...
and people of the net are entitled to search for what ever they wish. :D

Is it showing products for the merchant name as well.
Does your site look anything at all like theirs?

I'd just ban their name from being searched and swap it in for a different word.
If ($q == "banned merchant name") { $q="A Different Name"; }
Then delete their name from your database.

I doubt his site would look anything like the merchant's one unless he ripped off their template (which he said he didn't) and the keyword that HE ranks for that they do not isn't even their name, it's SIMILAR (meaning, not equal to). It is like a company claiming they own the color red and suing another company for using the color in their logo. Or someone googling youporn and landing on youtube's site and youtube suing youporn because it was a similar search but they didn't get the traffic...

I'm impressed with how Brian deals with it "be reasonable or GTFO". Merchants need to realize we're doing what they pay us to do... their SEO *for* them. In return they pay us a commission on SALES. So it's not like we're sending them illegitimate traffic to earn per-click revenue.

Probably a n00b at the helm. Would be interesting to see what the feedback is Brian got :D

[nite]

SOme merchants are going to be a bigger pain about that type of thing than others. PM me the merchant and I can talk to them or kick them from the network (unless they are a big performer)

Wow!

This is like the first time that I've ever heard of someone standing BEHIND their publishers in such a manner.

+1

[AcidRaZor]

Wow!

This is like the first time that I've ever heard of someone standing BEHIND their publishers in such a manner.

+1

Yea, if you know how long Brian have been doing CPA for you'd realize that he was treated badly by the networks too so he feels our pain and knows how to handle them, especially with the amount of traffic he's pushing :D

[toykilla]

To be honest I have never heard of the merchant. They can kiss my ass. I am outranking them for their keywords and they are mad :) The products are not even going to their site which is probably making them even more upset.

[Prosperent Andrew]

Wow!

This is like the first time that I've ever heard of someone standing BEHIND their publishers in such a manner.

+1

This is what we have always been about. We have been publishers for a long time and realized that no one looking out for us, so we are here to change that. As a matter of fact, our new site redesign that is in the works reads "Prosperent Affiliate Tools, For Affiliates By Affiliates." More on that soon...

[Prosperent Andrew]

To be honest I have never heard of the merchant. They can kiss my ass. I am outranking them for their keywords and they are mad :) The products are not even going to their site which is probably making them even more upset.

We had one merchant complain recently and looked to see how much commission we were earning from them. Over a span of 3 months we had made around $30. Seems like the smaller they are, the more they complain.

[nite]

The moral of the story is that if a publisher thinks that they can make more sales by throwing money away at Adsense, then by all means, they are free to do so. If not adsense, then there are hundreds of SEO companies who will take the money in order to help "organic" search engine rankings.

I guess that if publishers believe that they can make more money without Prosperent, then they can leave the program at any time in order to pursue more profitable paths. In the end, there will always be those stray publishers who complain; but, on the other hand, there are also publishers who are grateful to Prosperent for actually increasing sales, which is the bottom line IMHO.