Firm Uses Trademarks in Its Meta Tags — Trademark Protection

CitizenHawk gets creative with other firm’s trademarks.

Just when you thought you’ve seen everything…

CitizenHawk, a firm that helps trademark owners protect against typosquatters, has some peculiar keywords in its meta tags, counting trademarks of one major competitor.

Yes, you read that right. Here are CitizenHawk.com’s meta keywords on its home page:

cybersquatters, typosquatters, internet traffic, domain squatters, experts in stopping typosquatters, Hijacked, Brand, CPA, IP, fraudulent affiliate, Protect firm, brand reputation, misspelled, brandholder, cybersquatting, google, mark monitor, commission junction, typo

So the firm that helps others protect their trademarks includes a number of trademarks in its meta tags, counting Google, brand management firm Mark Monitor, and Commission Junction (an affiliate network that CitizenHawk is a member of).

Not that it really matters. Google doesn’t consider keyword meta tags in its ranking algorithms (although Yahoo still does). And it’s not like they can actually optimize for the term “Google”.

But still, seems a bit sketchy for a brand protection firm that helped FreeCreditReport.com score 1,017 domain names in a single UDRP to cram its meta tags with trademarks.

[Update: CitizenHawk has removed the offending meta tag keywords.]