The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) has decided to take Google head on, believing that they have contravened the Australian trade practices act, and are also engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct.

The ACCC is alleging that Trading Post contravened sections 52 and 53(d) of the Trade Practices Act 1974 in 2005 when the business names “Kloster Ford” and “Charlestown Toyota” appeared in the title of Google sponsored links to Trading Post’s website. Kloster Ford and Charlestown Toyota are Newcastle car dealerships who compete against Trading Post in automotive sales.

Without seeing the ads in question I would assume that the Trading Post were using keyword insertion within the ad copy, a practice which lets you to bid on a wide range of phrases and still have unique advertising copy related to the phrases people are using to search with.

The ACCC is also alleging that Google are not adequately distinguishing between their sponsored listings and organic results.  They are seeking an injunction that would prevent people from displaying advertising that is not expressively distinguished from organic results.

Google Australia spokesman Rob Shilkin said in a statement: “Google Australia believes that these claims are without merit and we will defend against them vigorously. They represent an attack on all search engines and the Australian businesses, large and small, who use them to connect with customers throughout the world.”

The matter is set to appear before Federal Court in Sydney on August 21, 2007.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Internet News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.