In my last post, All Hail the New Parasite, I ranted a bit about networks, OPMs and affiliates taking advantage of merchants on the TM PPC issue. This time, I’d just like to post a bit of data.
Because poachers not only steal commissions from merchants, but also overwrite the cookies of affiliates who previously referred a visitor, I thought I’d take it a step further.
I started this with Shareasale, and while they are not the only network turning a blind eye to TM abuse, I stuck with them for my amateur investigation hour. I went through (err… am still going through) their “Top 100 PowerRank” and checked for PPC policies, violations, etc. My search term in every case was “merchantdomain.com” (or .net, etc as the case may be). This is what I found (Note: the top 100 order changes a bit by when you look, so this may not match the list you see today):
1. checksunlimited.com - “checksunlimited.com” is specifically prohibited in the merchant TOS, yet affiliate 186740 has top spot on Adwords for the same.
2. 4checks.com - Domain can’t include TMs, but no PPC policy whatsoever. Top PPC spot owned by an affiliate.
3. LifeLock - “Lifelock.com” prohibited, but affiliate 171025 still claims to be the “LifeLock Official Site”…
4. rockler.com - “rockler.com” prohited, but guess who’s got top PPC spot. Yep, 171025…
5. i-supplements.com - No policy and top domain bid goes to an affiliate. .
6. bestdealmagazines.com - Another no policy merchant, and of course top PPC spot is owned by an affiliate. .
7. meritline.com - No policy in place, and of course on affiliate bid. .
8. understandmen.com - While the policy is pretty dang obtuse, domain bidding is prohibited, yet 186740 bids away.
9. landofnod.com - They’ve been forced to bid on their own top spot…
10. vanns.com - Max allowed bid for vanns.com is at $.20, but direct to merchant PPC bids for a domain tend to be closer to $.02 - $.05. In any case, an affiliate owns top spot.
11. IBS Direct - No Policy.
12. corporatecasuals.com - “corporatecasuals.com” prohibited, yet an SAS affiliate link is showing in top spot. Looks like maybe a removed affiliate who forgot to pull the campaign.
13. tinyprints.com - Merchant forced to bid on their own domain.
14. wisconsincheesman.com - Bids on “wisconsincheesman.com” expressly prohibited, but affiliate 186740 bids away bouncing traffic through their justjewelrysavings.com domain to scrub the referring URL and hide the bid…
15. medicus.com - Has a real mish-mash of a policy that both prohibits and allows bids on “medicus” as well as sets bid limits and prohibits outbidding by affiliates. I can’t tell if the #1 spot for “medicus.com” held by an affiliate is a violation or not.
16. discountanabolics.com - prohibits bidding period, without written permission as well as any copy portraying the affiliate’s site as the official merchant site, yet 200459 sits at #1 with an add claiming to be the merchant redirecting through a dummy domain.
17. corporatecasuals.com - “corporatecasuals.com” is expressly prohibited, but 200459 holds top spot.
18. ifrogz.com - a Linkshare affiliate is bidding on the term and using tinyurl to handle the redirect off to handhelditems.com.
19. celebrateexpress.com - Bids on their own domain, but so does birthdaydirect.com…
20. civantskincare.com - prohibits ALL PPC advertising “…including but not limited to keywords, adwords, pay-per-click, and the like, through any search engine including but not limited to Google, Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, MSN Paid Search, and the like” yet 180233 seems to think it’s okay to bid on the company’s domain.
21. bingproducts.com - No policy or affiliate agreement of any kind, so I’m not sure why the bidding affiliate is bothering to hide behind a redirect.
22. healthresources.net - The policy clearly says “No bidding on business name or domain name” but 207763 figures that doesn’t apply to them.
23. mybambino.com - No policy, but the company does bid on its own name.
24. whitesmoke.com - Big surprise, another clear policy violation by 200459.
25. oldguysrule.com - No policy, so why the elaborate series of redirects by the affiliate bidding on the merchant’s domain?
26. avanquestusa.com - Clear policy, and it looks like our friends at justjewelrysavings.com (mentioned above) got stung by it, because their #1 PPC spot is now landing on a 404 rather than a redirect.
27. all-battery.com - no policy and has an army of affiliates from multiple networks fighting over top spot.
28. csnstores.com - Extensive policy, but way too many domains for me to check…
29. mytoybox.com - prohibits use of its name in “search engine bidding”, but our old friend 200459 has not 1, but 2 redirected top spots for mytoybox.com.
30. MyTights.com - With such a vague policy, what can you expect but to have affiliates bidding on your domain?
31. ecresearchcorp.com - No policy, but I still find it hard to believe they’d be glad to see an affiliate claiming to be the “Official Website for ECResearchCorp The makers of Tri Lastin-SR®”…
32. yousendit.com - No policy, and yes affiliate bidding. Also a monster reversal rate. Can we expect a policy in the near future?
33. dhgate.com - “dhgate.com” prohibited, and shock of shocks - I didn’t find any affiliate bids. Of course their reversal rate hit 30% in November. Think they did some house cleaning…?
34. sit4less.com - No policy and multiple affiliates fighting for top spot.
35. DietDirect.com - Domain bidding is not allowed, but 192444 doesn’t seem all that bothered about the policy.
36. herbspro.com - Domain bidding against posted policy, but 113316 poaches away.
37. diino.com - diino is prohibited. I wonder if that would include diino.com (which is actively bid on by an affiliate)…
38. jonessoda.com - Nothing covering TM bidding, and of course it’s going on.
39. lilash.com - “You may not bid on any form or misspelling of our trademarked term ‘lilash’.” No bids, but again, sky high reversal rates back in November. Were there bids that got pulled after a round of reversals?
40. hocks.com - “hocks.com” expressly prohibited, but 172710 owns top spot.
41. i-say.com - No policy, and no bids.
42. lovemyshoes.com - “lovemyshoes.com” prohibited, but 192444 bids away.
43. bulknutrition.com - No on policy. Yes on bid.
44. bowlingball.com - The domain is expressly prohibited in the merchant’s posted pay per click policy, but 207763 bids anyway.
45. nativeremedies.com - Has a somewhat cumbersome policy to enforce, of not allowing affiliates to outrank Native Remedies for their trademarks, but cumbersome as it may be, it looks like its working. They have top spot for their domain.
46. steakbrands.com - Now bidding on their own domain after recently updating their policy and reversing some transactions. There was at least one affiliate bidding on steakbrands.com in late November, but they’ve since removed their bid.
47. tystoybox.com - Policy says no to bids on “tystoybox.com”, but 200459 holds top spot for the term.
48. magazinesquick.com - No policy, but I still think it’s questionable for affiliates to pose as the merchant in their ads.
49. signingtime.com - Does signingtime.com constitute a “likeness” of “signing time”? If so, one of our old friends is at it again…
50. clickinks.com - Interesting… Only two bids are from the merchant and a competing SAS ink merchant. To be fare it looks like they bid on the other guy’s domain as well…
51.
2 users commented in " Trademark Poaching - Who’s Stealing Your Holiday Commissions? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackAs long as AMs defend and encourage the activity and it is not policed by the merchants or the networks you will see those kinds of results. Several on that list were formerly on my sites. An affiliate has to wonder when they are promoting a merchant/merchants that match their traffic very highly, and receive lots of clicks and month after month of zero sales.
Some items are impulse purchases and people will just click and buy - but many items are “just shopping” type products so that when they do make a BUY decision they would need to remember where they saw that link before; or else just google it. Bye-bye commish. BTW I see the Land of Nod up there - who needs Trademark Poachers when you’ve got Upromise? My Bambino was converting very well for me until all of a sudden sales went into a black hole. More clickthroughs than ever, but not one sale. Took a look and sure enough justjewelrysavings.com/mybambino.html. I contacted the merchant originally because McAfee had him redlisted but when I saw the poaching I just took down all the pages and quit the program. Maybe he followed the link I sent to educate him, maybe he just wised up? Until all parties see the damage done it will continue. Makes it hard to find merchants to work with though.
Had taken a quick peek at this after it was mentioned in one of the threads but didn’t get time til now to look more at it.. really is eye opening. After reading about it I’ve done some searches on my own and found quite a few, too. Really is pretty demoralizing that this is tolerated so much.
Hard to imagine but guess a lot of the merchants just don’t really pay much attention either or they’d realize this can’t be good for their business.
Don’t know about any of the others but Kim from 4checks did just send out a revised terms the other day not allowing it.
Think I know the answer but even if the merchant or affiliate manager does allow the bidding on their domain name…..that’s not a good thing for another affiliate is it? I’ve had some merchants where I’ve gotten an awful lot of searches for relevant terms for them and clicks but not many purchases. This could possibly explain that what meagain mentioned in their post. (about looking then going back to find the link and it being one of them)
Thanks for researching this. Gonna subscribe to the feed so I don’t forget about this. lol
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