I had a search to find out if this was legal or not and found an interesting summary of the current state of play in the European Union:
<link removed>
It would appear that this practice will still be allowed for the time being.
Since my competitor is a better known than me it makes sense for me to return the compliment and bid on their domain name and brands.
Would you advise doing this ?
I don't currently have an adwords account and I have a slight concern about my organic traffic being affected if let Google know I am prepared for pay for traffic.
[edited by: eWhisper at 12:52 pm (utc) on Oct. 23, 2009]
[edit reason] Links to blogs are not allowed. Please see TOS. [/edit]
Your website should be listed first when someone google's your domain name. That gives you the best click threw rate for that keyword. If you're not at the top page for your own domain name, then you need to fix that first.
You might not have to buy their domain name as a keyword to get clicks from their customers. Google will only show search results from a domain once. If you search for your competitor's domain name you might see them on the first page and at the top of the list, but they should only be listed once. Google will not show more then two entries for a domain name.
You should try creating a linking campaign to position your website on the first page for their domain name search. It's a lot easier to create back links for a keyword when you are only targeting one keyword.
