What to do about an obvious rip off w/ Ad text & landing page?

[georgiek50]

Started a really good profitable campaign a few weeks ago. Took a break and vacation for NY's and came back to see a HUGE drop in sales.

After digging around some stats, I realized that a competitor one spot above me copied my Adwords Ad text and replicated my landing page (almost exactly exluding banner and some text here and there).

Sent Google an e-mail about the ad, but what can really be done about the rest? Am I to just get into a bidding war with this person?

[HughMungus]

Unless there's a copyright violation, I doubt you can do anything.

[georgiek50]

Doesn't google have a policy about copying someone else's creatives?

[peewhy]

They could claim you copied them!

[HughMungus]

Doesn't google have a policy about copying someone else's creatives?

Probably. Did you read the TOS?

[georgiek50]

They could claim I copied them, but their domain was registered 3 days ago, mine 3 weeks ago...Also, My Ad has been running for 3 weeks but theirs for 3 days. I think I'm pretty safe on that aspect. It's just a matter of how much Google cares about this.

[eyeinthesky]

Got the same problem. Some people just have no morals. One competitor copied my ad word for word but his landing page is different.

I had a previous incident where someone copied my landing page exactly. So I emailed him and politely asked him to take it down as he is infringing my copyright. He claimed that his designer did it and took it down :)

You can do some things :-

1. inform Google
2. complain to his registrar (or host company if you can find this out(
3. if both of you are promoting aff programs, complain to the merchant
4. hint of a legal action

[georgiek50]

Thanks for the tips guys.

[BluBay]

email this person and get heavy, thell them they are infringing and you might have to take legal action - works sometimes with me, but usually my competitors are pretty shameless and wont stop until google makes them.

[Sweezely]

Had the same problem here - the same guy copied TWO different ads in two different campaigns, and their website was a direct copy of someone elses. I contacted our account rep, but all she could do was forward our complaint on.

Of course, they got greedy. They "branched out" into a very competitive campaign and lost out big time. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha, we had the last laugh alright!

[georgiek50]

Yes...got the e-mail from Google the other day about "forwarding on the complaint"...B*ll#*$!!

Doesn't matter though, it's not the actual words, it's the process behind them. I'll just outsmart him...or not :(