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Defensive Search Engine Marketing is taking the online game to a higher level. Go ahead and spend millions on the Super Bowl, we'll be there to collect brand exposure at your expense; when the TV viewer searches for your promotion on Google or Yahoo. And they will.
Naturally, you include your URL in the TV ad, but the Pittsburgh fans are watching their team with a terrible towel, not a pen, in hand. So the viewers "Google" to learn more about GM's "Kermit inspired" hybrid car and find GM with their "Live Green - Go Yellow" online ad, extending the GM brand at Ford's expense.
For off-line advertisers, be aware that your competitors will be waiting for you online. And for the companies that are not paying the off-line fare, be ready with a strong online presence, to take some of the brand exposure ... that your competitor is serving up for you. Defensive Search Engine Marketing can be an effective online strategy. Thank you very much.
Side Note: And some Super Bowl advertisers totally flunk the course by not extending their online brand building opportunity, including Productive Solutions Cleaner "PS Cleaner". A $2.5 Million Super Bowl one shot wonder - with no online search program for interested buyers to find online. And there was no sponsored ads ready for Diet Pepsi' "Bown & Bubbly" promotion (although their site is organically ranked #1), nor a defensive search ad from Coke - a missed opportunity.
Cloaking; The Darkside of SEO?
The Romulans had the power to cloak, to secretly (via a false image) slip past the USS Enterprise. And some websites are slipping past Google, presenting a false image of who they really are to gain advantage. Is this really a dark-side black hat technique for optimizing your web site? Generally the answer is yes.
First, cloaking is the ability to intercept a search engine spider, by detecting their IP address - and present this spider with a highly optimized web page. Not the same page that you or I normally would see. And this is the problem with cloaking. It's a trick to slip past the USS Google to achieve a false high page rank, presenting a web page that may not be relevant for the end user.
However, there may be one situation where cloaking should be considered a legitimate tool for a web site owner. In a case where your web site is highly dynamic and personalized, the Search Engine spider would find a virtually empty web site (spiders have no personality). In this circumstance, if the spider is directed to a "typical" web page, one that has content that could be seen by most human visitors, then this should be considered a legit use of cloaking.
At this time, Google does not detect the different use of cloaking. So if your web site is detected employing this technique, watch out for USS Google's phasers - Serg! Fire Phasers (sorry Sulu).
With high capitalization comes power. Power to change how the world computes and does business. Microsoft and IBM "had" this power. Google has this power now.
Google attracts the best and brightest and their model encourages employees to "try" new ideas - think Froogle, Google News and others. These beta products will not change the world; however think of a personal computer priced at $100 and a Google only Internet. These two strategies could significantly change the computing business and both are in the works, according to the UK Times Online.
And both of these models leverage a revenue stream based on - what else? Contextual (highly relevant) Advertising.
Must be nice to change the world.
An Army marches on their stomach and Google is no different. Google' on-site food is legendary and free. This is one well fed army.
Take a look at foods of Google.