posted
Anyway, we both use Google AdWords. The way that works is you pay for your ads to show up on certain search terms, and the more you pay, the higher up in the results you're listed.
So our competitor went kinda nuts with their AdWords strategy. In some article, there was a certain phrase used to describe a TiVo DVR. They bought the adwords for that phrase, and were the only ones to bid on it. It got them a little bit of traffic, but most of it was unintentional.
Now here's what's interesting about this... AdWords will suggest certain phrases to you, based on what they think may be useful. After our competitor bought us out, they took a look at the list of suggested phrases. Sure enough, that one obscure phrase that nobody else paid for except for them was recommended to us. For the record, there's no way for us to look up what phrases other companies are buying. We can only figure it out based on how the ads are listed. For the longest time, we were in a bidding war for the phrases "tivo upgrade" and "tivo hard drive" with them.
Google knew we were direct competitors, and was taking advantage of their confidential information to drive the prices of AdWords phrases up between the two of us.
Dicks.
