I prefer to think of it as an investment.

Cheers, Lee. Not missing Nîmes. In fact, that\'s where I am right now. Will have to gather some photos of the amphitheatre before I post about it, I think.

Yeah, it was certainly an experience. We\'re going to take it easy for a few days now, I think.

You\'re right about the beggars. I had a guy in Bordeaux follow me up the street tapping on my shoulder and asking me for money. Foolishly said that I only have plastic, which usually works in New Zealand. The guy was bold: \"Oh, that\'s fine, that\'s fine. Come to this patisserie and buy me a chocolate eclair.\"

Yeah, I\'ve come to travel a bit late in life, mainly due to being terrible with money in the past.

Regarding public transport, this may make you feel a bit better. Yesterday we tried to buy some tickets through the automated system and it froze for a bit, then buzzed, went blank, then rebooted and we were left with a Windows start-up screen staring at us.

That\'s a good point, regarding the cost-per-click against how many of them realise they\'re in the wrong place and bounce. Cheers for the feedback.

What happens when someone\'s brand name is a pretty generic keyword(s)?

Hi Richard, thanks for your response.

Fair enough that you would not be precluded from using \"Auckland Search Engine Optimisation\" if such a company existed. It would be a very generic term for an SEO company to use as their name. But if such a company existed, how would you feel about them purchasing SEM ads with the title copy \"Pure SEO\" and the link \"www.aucklandseo.co.nz/PureSEO\"? Would you not feel at least a bit like they were not targeting generic terms, but looking to get traffic from people who were searching for your company in particular?

I understand that you\'re saying that, in this case, \"Glendowie Dental Centre\" happened to be both the name of an existing company and a more generic term than \"Pure SEO\" would be. But the net result was that if I recommended the existing Glendowie Dental Centre to someone and they searched for it on Google, at the very top of the page would have been a link to an entirely different dental centre under the name of the business I had recommended. I find it difficult to believe that you had not researched the search terms and/or had not considered that this would very likely deceive people in a way that profited your client to the detriment of Glendowie Dental Centre. Just as our imaginary Auckland SEO company would be well aware that by buying out ads with the title \"Pure SEO\", they would probably trick some people looking for you into clicking through to them.

And you did very quickly change the title copy of that ad so that it still came up for relevant searches, still advertised your client for the suburb, but could no longer be accused of tricking people into thinking they were clicking through to Glendowie Dental Centre. It clearly didn\'t take much time or effort to change that wording, and the only traffic you lost in doing so was traffic that was specifically looking for the existing Glendowie Dental Centre.

You\'ve listed the techniques you don\'t use, and I can see why, in comparison to them, you\'d call yourself white-hat. In comparison to them, so would I. I just would have preferred you\'d used your revised, non-deceptive title copy from the outset.

I\'ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that rather than a calculated move to steal GDC\'s referrals or existing customers, this was just a case of ploughing through a bunch of SEM ads quickly for each suburb, only pausing at \"St Helier\'s Dental Centre\" because you saw that there were already SEM ads with that title, and not really noticing that there was already a Glendowie Dental Centre – which you fixed when it was pointed out to you.

SEM aside, certainly your SEO work is effective, and I\'m certain you\'re giving clients value. Again, cheers for the response.

Possibly. Google makes all of their money through advertising, so they must have to walk a line between ensuring search results remain relevant enough that people will favour their engine and at the same time not punishing paying clients.

There\'s really two things here: SEO and PPC. The SEO they\'ve done leaves me feeling dirty, but it\'s basically within the rules, though they may be courting penalties with the duplicate-content pages. The PPC is also basically above board, in that Baycare is within 15-20 minutes\' drive from the suburbs they\'re hitting search results for.

The only full-blown dodgy thing here is advertising with a competitor\'s business name. It\'s intentionally deceptive and is clearly done in the hopes that people who are searching for Glendowie Dental Centre (perhaps having had it recommended to them) will convert through to business for Baycare after thinking they\'ve clicked on the right link (since it\'s named exactly the same as the business they were looking for).

Not at all. Excellent!

That doesn't look like stiffening to me. Maybe a fan.

But still, if he did it, the answer to your question, "Why?" is "BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME."

Oh, I can\'t remember. It was more of a chat where he seemed legit.