lindavh - 11:07 pm on Apr 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

Hi Bird,

Thanks for the email (and others too).
It's sometimes difficult to be exact in these forums without giving away too much, so I just used the "/" to separate the two terms; it is not actually used in the title.

Their company dba name is: "City Name Generic Service(s). This is not it, but let's say for comparison (although not the actual name),
"Los Angeles Vehicles".

We operate in that city name (exclusively) and provide that service (exclusively) as well.
And so my site Title is (for keyword optimization): "City Name Generic Service - Our Company Name"

In comparison to the example I used above:
"Los Angeles Vehicle Service - Our Company Name"

We are not trying to use their company name to misdirect or mislead. Their company dba name is "the city name and service type" and so they feel that no one in the city can use those words.

Those words allow us to describe our location and the service type, so how can they own that term. They are asking us to remove that term in our advertising and we are that term as well...it is a generic reference to the product and to the location.

There are several other people who sell that product in this city as well, use it in their desription, but apparently don't use those terms in the their title tag because they do not know that it is better than using your company name alone, which is unknown to someone looking in the search engines for a service within a city.

Just thought I'd clarify that we are using this generic term to identify our product and area of service, along with our company name. How can they tell us not to use that? It seems to go against everything I have been learning here about keyword use in title, description, metas, and content.

That IS our service and city, they just happened to name their company using those keyword terms and do not want others to use it. They are implying it is fraudulant and yet it is what we do.

Anyone curious can sticky me for the domains and you will understand why I asked the question here. I imagine many a webmaster SEO will use location and product type in their keywords, and if they choose to will use them at the head of their title tag for optimization purposes.

I don't mean to be repetitive, but some posts are asking if I am using this to use their "name" to my benefit...and that is not the "intent".

What's a girl to do?