ethical optimisation wins through

This year promises to be quite a year from all I hear from the legal beagles, in the UK, European Parliament and from the US.

The first wave is about to start at last, and this should shut a few big mouths that have been promoting splog like tactics for some time. At last this starts to level the playing field once again as the The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations act 2008 starts to kick in from the 28th May 2008.

A section of the act states that “falsely representing oneself as a consumer” will be illegal. There have been some high profile exposés of companies blogging using false personas as unmasking has caused backlash from consumers as Sony and Wal-Mart have both found out in the States.

This is a shame of course, because where self policed, privately enforced ethics are not good enough, the law has to step in and the law has a habit of increasing or creating extra beuracracy and often making silly mistakes that can prove uncomfortably expensive for the industry.

To my personal knowledge, Weboptimiser has never indulged in this activity, although I have seen arguments on other search engine marketing companies blogs about splogging (spam blogging) which refers to the act of falsely representing oneself as a consumer in order to make comments, but also to gain link equity.

So, SEM companies that engage in this had better stop sharpish, as in just a few days, you could find yourselves breaking the law.