Try googling 'Sonia Gandhi'.
Ok, now try 'Manmohan Singh'.
Did you do it? Ok now try 'Rahul Gandhi'.
What was the one common result in all three searches? Try again and look at the AD results by Google on the right, each time you will get only one ad 'Why Advani Ji is a better leader and why BJP is a better party'.
This is not chance my friends, its a new technique called 'Brand Jacking' by Google introduced as part of their overall Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategy.
So what's happening here is that
BJP has 'brand jacked' keywords (850 of them!!) like Sonia Gandhi so that every query with these keywords will return their sponsored ads and thus in effect drive more traffic to their websites and eventually (they would hope) spread their propaganda to readers who were actually interested in reading about Mrs. Gandhi and her motley crew !
This is becoming a common practice in the industry, so please please register your brands with Google as a registered trademark. this will allow you to block competitors from using your brands as keywords to generate their own ads. Try Colgate, you will only get Colgate sponsored links. Well you may also get results from Monster about jobs in Colgate, but I figure Colgate doesn't mind that too much.
In fact, the issue doesn't stop here. See this article on imediaconnection.com on
'The Art of Self Defense against Brand Jacking'. The problem is the way social media has grown, companies have less and less control over who is saying what about them, and more importantly
in what capacity. For argument's sake, I could start a blog today as an employee of Hindustan Lever and write without any constraint whatsoever. This obviously exposes brand HLL to significant risk.
Please read the article linked above to see what are the strategies we need to adopt to ensure we are not exposed to any such risk and how not to let the internet run free with your brand !!