Keyword Advertising and Bankruptcy

Web sites needs eyeballs, pageviews, or traffic to sell content or products. Google Adwords, Overture, FindWhat, etc. all provide cost-per-click (CPC) service to merchants or sites to buy web traffic via bidding on keywords. The thing is 'keyword' is the focus, thus it became a commodity, virtually, being bought and sold in a way online to gain targeted visitors for the merchants, and to earn revenue for the search companies.

There's a company called NORVERGENCE has just filed Chapter 11 and is falling on tough financial times. How is it related to CPC advertising? Indeed, it is related in this not-so-crazy world. You might not be able to buy a trademark keyword of a company name in some cases, either you'll be strong-armed to take the bid down, or the seller like Google won't sell the keyword at all for one reason or another. When the company like NORVERGENCE is going under in T1 market, their competitor(s) is sending out emails to affiliate, strongly suggesting them to buy and bid on 'NORVERGENCE'.

Here's the original email I mentioend:


Dear XXXXXXX,

OPPORTUNITY IS KNOCKING TONIGHT
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In our business, acting quickly to changes in the T1
industry is what helps us gain an advantage over
our competitors. One such change just occured today!

A large carrier called NORVERGENCE has fallen on tough
financial times. So tough in fact that all of their
T1 customers run a significant risk of having their
service turned OFF on JULY 15 (tomorrow).
---------------------------------------------------

CALL TO ACTION
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If you advertise online, please add 'norvergence' to your
list of keywords - also add it to your META tags and
mirror site content. There will be a significant flow
of traffic to that keyword in the coming days.
---------------------------------------------------

Happy Advertising,

Patrick Oborn, CTO
ShopForT1.com
poborn@shopfort1.com


What's the point? The idea behind this suggested practice is to act quickly to hijack competitor's potential or even existing customer base. Will this work? My guess is that this approach will work to some extend. For one, people searching on 'NORVERGENCE' hopefully is looking for problems of the company, or might be existing customers seeking for solution to the potential outage. It is the later that is highly targeted potential customer. When it comes to keyword bidding and purchsing, sheer numbers of traffic you get is one thing, relevant targeted traffic is another, and is oftenly more important.

I hop on Overture and did a search on 'norvergence', I got the followings ranked #1:


NorVergence Bankruptcy: Customer Issues
Keeping your phone lines turned on - Ensure your service, connections, and telephone numbers remain intact with no interruption of service as a result of NorVergence's recent bankruptcy.
www.myameritel.com (sponsored listing)
(Advertiser's Max Bid: $2.00)


Someone is really doing it.