Unofficial Site Ranking Higher Than Official Site

**affy369** · 07-09-10

Hi All

I wonder if anyone can help.

I've got a friend who works for the new Aylesbury Waterside Theatre. The official site is http://www.ambassadortickets.com/Aylesbury-Waterside-Theatre.

However, some little tinker has registered http://www.aylesburywatersidetheatre.co.uk/ and this is registering higher for the search term 'aylesbury waterside theatre'. It is a good looking site, but the owner won't put a link to or sell tickets for the official site.

Is it possible to 'report' them to Google, or is just a case of doing a better SEO job?

Any help on how to tackle this would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Affy

**aldorun** · 07-09-10

On what behalf you are thinking of reporting them to Google, just because they outranked the official site and don't put a link of official site? This will certainly not help.

They are at #1 because their on page optimization is better than the official website and they have exact domain name for that keyword phrase which is a positive factor for them. Only way to tackle this is to improve the SEO of official site and get them rank at #1.

**affy369** · 07-09-10

Thanks for your comment.
I knew that for Adwords you can register a trademark and just wondered if there was something similar for SEO.
Kudos to them, their URL is a killer, but the only thing is from a relevancy point of view is that you can't buy tickets from there, making it confusing for the viewer.
Is there anything you would concentrate on SEO wise or is that wishful thinking too?

**aldorun** · 07-09-10

You can contact them and request them to join the affiliate program of the official site (if they have any).

**robdeehan** · 08-09-10

There are lots of things you and your friend should consider as to why the unofficial page is ranking higher than the official page. Like what some of the guys above have said, maybe it's on-page optimized than the official site.. Or, you have not geo-targeted the official page when doing off-page SEO for that certain site. Also, Google has different ranks for sites for different countries, you might want to check on that too.

**quids4free** · 08-09-10

I wouldn't be surprised if the aylesbury waterside theatre had the right to the name anyway, seems like fairly obvious cybersquatting to me. You might want to contact Nominet with a dispute over the name (if the owner won't co-operate, it will likely be a lengthy procedure so if they'll shift the domain to you for a few hundred £ it's probably worth it)

Here is the Nominet policy documents: Nominet - Policy

Nominet - Disputes/Legal

Relevant section:

3. Evidence of Abusive Registration

a. A non-exhaustive list of factors which may be evidence that the Domain Name is an Abusive Registration is as follows:

i. Circumstances indicating that the Respondent has registered or otherwise acquired the Domain Name primarily:

A. for the purposes of selling, renting or otherwise transferring the Domain Name to the Complainant or to a competitor of the Complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of the Respondent's documented out-of-pocket costs directly associated with acquiring or using the Domain Name;

B. as a blocking registration against a name or mark in which the Complainant has Rights; or

C. for the purpose of unfairly disrupting the business of the Complainant;

I would think that you should be able to use one out of those three reasons, if not all of them.

**robdeehan** · 10-09-10

The unofficial site is "geo-targeted" in the UK. If you will use google.uk to search for your site using your keyword (which is let's say Aylesbury Waterside Theatre), it prioritizes websites with .uk in the domain name. This is probably the reason why the unofficial site ranks up first in the search engine results page.

**Evilboy** · 10-09-10

Tell your friend or someone from Aylesbury Waterside Theatre to contact the site owner and tell him to stop using the trademark Aylesbury Waterside Theatre in the domain name. Threaten him with legal action if he fails to do so.

**ross_hinton** · 10-09-10

I would speak to Nominet.

**yogi1981** · 13-09-10

I suggest the best options are:

>> Do better on page optimization
>> Do few good social bookmarking
>> Build few good links

and try to beat him through SEO.....

OR

>> Create a private revenue sharing affiliate program and offer him %% commission

OR

>> Request him to transfer that domain back to you at some reasonable price

**Brendon** · 21-09-10

My first question would be "why the hell didn't the theatre buy the very obvious domain name in the frist place?" but it's a bit late for that now. You can try the Nominet route, but I think you may be on shaky ground - the registration isn't clearly abusive per se, but you may be able to make a case that its effectively passing itself off as the "official" site, and that your claim to it is stronger, but if they don't sell tickets, that claim gets a lot weaker. This is clearly a travel / hotels play, so they can make a pretty strong "fair use" argument.

I think you're going to have to 1) beg and 2) offer them an astounding deal to get the domain back, since they have no incentive whatsoever to put themseves at your mercy. If you offered them a cast iron contract guaranteeing them rights to the domain in perpetuity in return for them carrying your tickets, that might work. Otherwise, I think you're in real trouble

Much depends on how serious the theatre is about it's online presence, and how far they are willing to go to protect it