Keyword searches for words like "real estate," "Realtor" and "realty" can be purchased by companies on Google's search engine. But if your company has been indexed by the award-winning search engine under one of those keywords, a consumer who has keyed in your company name may be delivered to the waiting link of your competitor.

That's what happened to broker J. Lennox Scott. He says his 70-year-old brand "John L Scott Real Estate" is being used to deliver leads to Google advertiser HomeGain and not to his company. When he objected that HomeGain's ad looked too much like a search result, and was placed above his own company's result, he says Google promptly removed HomeGain's sponsored link.

"I consider HomeGain to be a competitor," says Scott. "I don't want customers who are seeking information about my company to be diverted to a competitor."

While it can be argued that Google has every right to leverage its database to advertisers, and that advertisers are clearly identified as such with a pale background color and a "sponsored link" disclaimer, Scott and some others believe that trademarked brands keyed in by the consumer should not be used to pump leads to advertisers. Some complain that Google's ads look too much like search results, which may cause confusion among quick-clicking customers who may not realize they may be clicking on an ad and not a search result.

While Google appears to have removed some ads from some brokers' search results, others remain, prompting RELO Network CEO Pam O'Connor to invoke the power of her 800-plus broker member community to get advertisers off brokers' brand name search results.

In a letter to Google, RELO Network CEO Pam O'Connor writes, "We believe that advertising should not be designed or placed so as to deliberately divert the website visitor from a company he or she has selected. This seems to exploit the real estate company's name, marketing, reputation and relationships for someone else's gain."

"HomeGain will try to convert this visitor into a home buyer or seller referral and place it with their real estate network of agents. Even if they happen to place it with an agent who is with the originally searched real estate company, that business would now come encumbered with a 25-35 percent referral fee," writes O'Connor.

The RELO Network is a for-profit relocation cooperative between 800 broker members, representing over 85,000 sales associates. According to Real Trends, in the top 80 markets, RELO members were number one or two in market share, says O'Connor. Like Homegain, the company charges referral fees, but notes that RELO is not focused on capturing consumers, but serving members.

"Our main mission is referrals among the members," explains O'Connor. "This concerns me because it seems that individual real estate companies were targeted. When I did a search I didn't see any ads on Homestore or HomeSeekers, and they are in the real estate category."

HomeGain could be construed as a competitor of the RELO Network, but O'Connor denies it. "HomeGain is an agent-to-agent referral network, we are a broker-to-broker network. Our membership is required to route non-member referrals through our network," she says. "We will pass the word and express our concern to our members that a search engine is supposed to be a search engine. When results look like part of the search, you are diverting people from the information they wanted to someone who wants to collect a referral fee without adding value."

A search of other brokers' sites, including Homeservices, shows that other companies are also capitalizing on the broker brands. At the top of a search for relocation broker Homeservices, appears an ad from Getamover.com.

"I doubt they'll like that," comments Scott.

Google could not be reached for comment.

Published: August 9, 2001

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