VisitBritain.com Robbing Irish Tourists?

Posted in: Keywords by Richard Hearne on July 17, 2008

I cant remember how I came across this, but doing a search for [information for ireland] returned quite an odd Adwords ad:

Image of VisitBritain.com Adwords Ad Targeting ‘Ireland’

If you’re wondering why the destination URL has ‘Thailand’ in it that’s my current location – the beautiful but wet island of Phuket. But I digress – back to VisitBritain.com.

VisitBritain.com now Includes Irish Holidays?

Not on your nelly. While Adwords advertisers often bid on competitor terms and brands I think this is rather brazen ad copy. The site most certainly is not the official site for visitors to Irland, and does not offer any functions for planning trips to Ireland. In fact the closest they come is Northern Ireland, but given that there is only one state with the official name ‘Ireland’ that hardly counts.

VisitBritain.com now offering information on Ireland?
Image of VisitBritain.com

Very underhand if you ask me…

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Comments (9)

9 Comments »

Hey Richard,
Thanks for picking up on that for us, unfortunately we are discovering legacy issues in some of our campaigns. We are in the process of remodelling our older PPC campaigns and are revising our broad match / keyword insertion campaigns.
Regards,

Comment by Steve — July 17, 2008 @ 12:50 pm

[...] Are VisitBritain.com robbing Irish Tourists? [...]

Pingback by Jazz Biscuit: » It’s a jazz shaped interweb — July 17, 2008 @ 2:54 pm

Hi Steve

You guys are busy on the reputation management side eh?

I’m just a little curious though – what keyword were you targeting that broad matched ‘ireland’? Other curiosity – ‘Northern Ireland’ wont fit into that headline because it would then have too many characters.

I’m happy that you’re going to fix it all the same. Very misleading IMO.

Rgds, and thanks for stopping by
Richard

Comment by Richard Hearne — July 17, 2008 @ 5:46 pm

Hi Richard,

Just a wee comment on the serving on both www. and non www. What is the effect of getting both these URL’s indexed in Google? i.e. if they are in the public domain as shortcuts, will a) people use them and thus get duplicate issues, which then needs to be specified by the Webmaster in webmaster tools..

I see where you are comign from but think you are maybe trying to solve a problem that doesn’t necessarily exist, or has little or no impact on a sites traffic. granted savvy tech users like you or me might try without the www, knowing the way it works, but if people cant find without the www surely they turn to Google or try it with the www. anyway?

Comment by Paul Anthony — July 22, 2008 @ 12:41 pm

Hi Paul

Is your question related to this post? Main problem is duplicate content, and the fact that you cant control which version Google displays. With the correct redirects you can still let users type in the short (non-www) version. I’m not so sure that everyone will turn to either the www version or google if the site doesn’t appear.

Did you mean to comment on the VHI post?

Rgds
Richard

Comment by Richard Hearne — July 22, 2008 @ 1:04 pm

Apologies, yes this should be on VHI post, I was reading via a feed reader and my reading flowed on down into this page. But yeah, I’ve seen you mention this non-www issue before.

Comment by Paul Anthony — July 22, 2008 @ 1:27 pm

Got ‘em by the big toe.
I could see this ruffling a few republican feather?

Comment by James — August 10, 2008 @ 9:49 pm

What’s better to SEO? Make a 301 redirect with .htaccess or tell this to GWebamster tool?
Thanks.

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