Spammy brand mentions
-
Hi guys,
Recently I started to receive via Google Alerts a lot of brand mentions on obviously spammy pages/websites like this http://www.iconshut.com/business-cards-every-matrix-has-recently-gone-through-a-rebranding--icons/
Where Every Matrix (EveryMatrix) is our brand name. It have first noticed it a few weeks ago but I started to receive this kind of alerts almost daily. There are no links pointing back to our website so I can not disavow them at least.
Since it could be a negative SEO attempt, my feelings are that this kind of mentions (https://moz.com/blog/panda-patent-brand-mentions) will hurt on the long run and I'm concerned that I can not control it or at least I don't know how to do it.
What is you take on this? What can we do?
-
Today can be a page talking about icons, tomorrow other subject ...
Thanks. My biggest problem is image theft.
There are a lot of sites doing this with my brand. I don't think it is worth doing anything about, and I don't think it is malicious - unless they are using your brand name and your content in a bad way or to attract traffic to ad-filled pages that should have been coming to your site. But these sites generally do not rank well.
Today can be a page talking about icons, tomorrow other subject ...
-
Thanks guys for responses.
@Chris
We do send out a fair share of PRs (we are a B2B software/platform provider) but considering the amount of spammy brand mentions I see lately on completely unrelated pages and based on assumption (https://moz.com/blog/panda-patent-brand-mentions) that Google (now or in the future) may consider this kind of brand mention as a ranking factor ... so yeah, I'm more concerned about long term negative impact that this proportion could have on our rankings.@EGOL
The link I showed was a random pick from a long list of unrelated pages mentioning our brand name that started to show up lately. Is not about stealing our content or anything like that ... just random pages. Today can be a page talking about icons, tomorrow other subject ... the domains look random as well. -
I don't think that it is negative SEO. It is simply a weasel who is grabbing your icons and offering them to anybody anywhere to use for free.
If that icon is your intellectual property, and you have not released them to the public (this website says that you released them with a creative commons license), and if you don't want them distributed by this website, you can contact them to remove it and stop using your icons. If they do not obey or do not respond you can submit a DMCA complaint to google and they will drop that image or that page from search. You can do the same with their hosting company and do the same with adsense or another ad network that they are using.
I submit dozens of complaints about weasels every month.
Warning: don't do this unless you know that these icons are your property and you can prove it and you have not released them under any type of license. You can get sued if you get this guy's pages removed from google, his hosting turned off or get his adsense account shut down. Just letting your know that you have recourse that should only be used with great caution.
-
"There are no links pointing back to our website"
I honestly wouldn't worry, you can't control everything that is said about you and as long as there isn't any negative looking links or the stuff is out ranking your brand terms then i wouldn't worry. I can imagine your customers are not looking at some of the sites any way so focus on who would read the stuff and will it affect their opinion of you and does it matter?
If you do have some worry you can always start to put out your own PR to put out better stuff that might help you.
Good luck and I hope that put your mind at ease a bit.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Help! Odd SERP results on two branded terms.
We have had the ODDEST thing happen to our Branded search. Last week we started seeing our Women’s subdomain (women.duluthtrading.com) outranking our main Duluth Trading domain (duluthtrading.com) on searches for “duluth trading co” and “duluth trading company”. Sample of odd results page: http://screencast.com/t/cKgkaYc1 As you can see- our Women's sub domain is ranking #1 then our main domain, THEN what used to be our organic site links are now listing 3-6. If you search for "duluth trading" though, you will get the typically results page: http://screencast.com/t/qGLDWiM0f We have been trying to figure out how or why this has happened. Our website went out for 30 minutes on January 4th. We thought maybe that is what happened but it has now been 7 days. Any help or suggestions would be great!
Branding | | sderuyter0 -
Site Architecture for Sub-Brands
I am working on launching a few industry specific sub-brands for our marketing agency and am trying to figure out the best way to deliver a tailored user experience using subfolders instead of subdomains, if this is indeed the best option... Since I am trying to provide separate experiences, I looking at housing microsites in sub-folders - say /technology or /medical. Each with its own navigation, home page, and industry specific content/blog/portfolio. A couple things I am considering: Will my microsite "home pages" and site pages rank as well in a sub-folder versus if they were actually the primary pages on their own sub-domain? Will separate Wordpress and theme installs and separate primary navigations have any affect on SEO if they are in sub-folders of the same site? Thanks in advance for any input. I really appreciate it!
Branding | | Alaniz0 -
Should the Facebook page be just the brand name or also include keywords?
Hi. Do you recommend that a company's Facebook Page be just the Brand Name, or should it include some keywords in the title?
Branding | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Should I remove spaces from my brand name?
I'm looking for some second opinions on this one. In talking with another SEO, he is of the opinion that if my company name is two words like Crazy Man, I should write some news release that have my brand combined as Crazyman because it is a variant of the brand name. He claims that Google does not look at my brand as Crazy Man, but as one word and in Google's mind Crazyman as one word is my brand. What do you all think?
Branding | | kadesmith1 -
Protecting Your Domain/Brand
Hi All, We've registered our domain with register.com they will not all us to buy .ca unless we reside in canada, same fro uk. Has anyone run into this problem? I wouldnt want someone to snatch it up and use it to their advantage.
Branding | | TP_Marketing0 -
Splitting our main website in Two... What is the fastest way for the new sites to become a brand in Googles eyes.
In a couple weeks our main website (which generates all of the revenue) will be split into two because of a long term branding / identity crisis. So my question is, how can i make sure (besides obvious 301 redirects) that these 2 new fresh urls become a brand as quick as possible in googles eyes? So far i am thinking of things like: press releases, blog posts with brand mentions. I am not ignorant and expect this to happen overnight, but we need a strong foundation to build on, which is why i am asking Anyone got a list / case study / advise so I can really blow it up on launch week? Thanks 🙂
Branding | | Hyrule0 -
What do search engines consider brand signals?
After being hit by the Penguin stick, like good content marketers we are trying to focus on improving brand signals for our site. But I keep coming up against what exactly brand signals are. I can understand that if you are called 'Ziggle' and someone links to you with that in anchor text or mentions that name, that would be a brand signal. But we're on a generic domain (descriptive of the produt type), so what would constitute brand signals in our case?
Branding | | RogerElliott1 -
Brand SERP Domination
Hi Mozfans, I've been asked by my management to try and "Dominate" our Branded SERP (I've also posted this question as a private question to the Moz staff but would love to know what the community thinks of this or if anyone has "Brand SERP" experience); For our brand name, the first page SERP currently looks like this; ================================ Current SERP 1 (Google UK): Our homepage (with the 6 pack of prominent pages beneath it) An advert that we control An advert that we control An advert that we control An advert that we control One of those random business directories - we don't control the listing Something not related to us at all Something not related to us at all One of those random business directories - we don't control the listing Something not related to us at all ================================ As you can see from the above list, we are already dominating the top 50% of our branded SERP page, however management would like 100% (of course). Now two obvious things that are missing from our Branded SERP page are our Facebook Page and our Twitter Profile, however, how do I get those to rank? I believe I read somewhere (it might have been on the SEOmoz/YOUmoz blog) that the answer is to build links to those profiles (with your brand name as the anchor text). Would that work? We currently use an external SEO company for our link building so could it help if we asked them to build links for us pointing at those two social profiles? Also, are there any other methods for dominating a branded SERP? What would you recommend? Thanks in advance everyone! Regards, Ash
Branding | | AshSEO20110