Search engine ‘minefield’ for advisers

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Internet search engines are a potential “minefield” for advisers who don’t understand how they work, according to an expert on financial adviser business marketing.

Wednesday, November 21st 2012, 6:34AM 2 Comments

by Niko Kloeten

Strictly Business owner Tony Vidler said many advisers are good at using technology to run their businesses but they don’t understand “incidental” aspects such as how keywords are generated; and this, he said, could get them in trouble.

For instance, he said product providers could potentially claim trademark infringement if advisers used their name as a keyword to be picked up by search engines without their permission.

This is exactly what happened to one adviser, who did not want to be named, who recently received a legal letter from Pinnacle Life after a Google search of the term “Pinnacle Life” returned a paid advertisement for the adviser’s company.

“Using “Pinnacle Life” as a paid search term for your entity is a breach of Pinnacle Life’s Trade Mark and a breach of Google adword policy,” the letter said.

“You do not have an agency agreement with Pinnacle Life, nor do you have Pinnacle Life’s implied or expressed permission to use our entity name in any form for your advertising or soliciting material.”

The adviser said the use of the term “Pinnacle Life” as a keyword for the paid advertising service Google Adwords had been unintentional, that it was one of 250 keywords and had been generated automatically by Google.  

Vidler said the case showed how easy it was to accidentally fall afoul of product providers looking to protect their brand; for instance, he said on blogging site WordPress if you push “one wrong button” it can generate a bunch of keywords you didn’t want to use.

And he said product providers aren’t the only ones advisers need to watch out for in their keywords.

“If you’re an AFA there’s an obligation not to bring the industry into disrepute and if you have references on your blog to how other advisers are doing things it might come up with a reference to “crooked AFAs”.”

Niko Kloeten can be contacted at niko@goodreturns.co.nz

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