He said, she said using Google ads part II

Yesterday I posted about the fight between online hotel seller Asiativ and meta-search player Hotelscombined being played out on through paid search war of words. Via a comment on that post I looked at the Google results for the search Asiativ. Check out the results in this screenshot

In case you can't read it, the top paid search result says

Please Read
www.Asiativ.com Clarification on Negative Ad Done By Hotels Combined

and the second one says

Do not book with AsiaTiv
www.HotelsCombined.com Fraud alert : Asiativ.com Read customer reviews first

Again I am just passing on their words. I have none of the background here so cannot comment on either of the views from the Asiativ or HotelsCombined. But what the hell is Google doing allowing these things to go on in their search results!

UPDATE - Google have stepped in (or a truce has been called). See shot below. Though there is now a good SEO battle as you can see from the seventh organic link on the search term Asiativ. If this is Google action then they have moved quicklyThe below shot is only fours hours after this post went live

Buying brand terms of Google as part of litigation

I received some traffic today from the someone that searched in Google "hotelscombined wego". This often happens to me that combinations of competitor names results in traffic to the BOOT as I am one of the few places that regularly talks about competitors in the same post. I followed the referring link to see how high a ranked. Below is a screenshot of the Google page I came to. Have a look at the top sponsored link


In case you can't see, it says

"Warning Hotelscombined: www.asiativ.com Read legal procedures running Currently against Hotelscombined"

I have never seen anything like this. I know that Google has loosened the restrictions on bidding for brand terms. But I have never heard of a company buying a brand term so they can put up a link accusing another company of "defamation, fraud and falsification" (their words not mine). Here is the full text of the Asiativ accusation against Hotelscombined. I don't know Asiativ (do you?) so can't give any background on them. I do know Hotelscombined. They are an Australian based meta-search company headed by some guys that made their start in online travel working for HotelClub.

I also know Google and I am very surprised to see that they are allowing this ad to stay on the site. Anyone out there ever seen anything like this?

UPDATE - here is a later post with more on this including how Hotelscombined is bidding for Asiativ's brand.