Competitor's name in the meta description of my page?

[vasskes]

Hello there,

I would really appreciate some thoughts on the following:

What do you think about adding a competitors name in the description of one of the high ranking pages a company has?
I mean a website is one of our competitors, but we also are one of the top service providers there and have a profile and all - it is an online bidding marketplace; and we added their name in our meta description.
So we are wondering if this is good or bad? If anyone has had any experience please let me know.

I will report on how this affects us as well.

Thanks in advance!

[Takahashi240]

My initial reaction to this is that it is a bad idea.

However, it really depends on the market and the context. Is the competing brand also a generic keyword to your market? How is the competitor brand name being put in there? Is there context around it? Are you attacking their brand? If the meta description is attacking the brand, it is generally a bad marketing move, in general. Deciding to start a brand vs. brand war is one that requires a lot of forethought and, potentially, money. What you do will surely elicit a reaction from them. Are you prepared for that?

Another reason I think it is a bad idea (but, again, depends on the actual example) is because the description is likely to become less relevant to the content on the page. The goal of the meta description is to get the interest of the user searching in order to click through to your site. Would you visit a site that uses importantly scarce characters to say "Come to us, because we are better than [competitor]"?

[NCrypted]

As per my opinion you should not do that kind of marketing. You shall focus on marketing using your name rather than using their name on your website. If you use their name on your website's meta description then they are benefited more in terms of search engine. They will get more impression for their website. So rather than using their name in Meta Details you can just market your website effectively. That will be better for you.

[Lb1878]

Why would you do this? What are you trying to accomplish? The meta description is rarely used in the search results any more. Google takes a snippet from your page content. I cannot understand why you would want to draw attention to a competitor in the same space you are trying to gain a click-thru. As many arguments as there are about the meta description being useless, I still use them and only add something that would attract the web searcher or a call to action to hopefully trigger the user to click my link.

Waste of your time IMO...

[Test-ok]

He's trying to trick users into thinking he's his competitor.
He's Roto Rutter and puts Roto Rooter in his description.

[OzFraud]

Grow your brand the correct way by not adding your competitor's name in your description. Instead, why not spend time on competitive analysis, backlinks search, off-page SEO?

[Lb1878]

He's trying to trick users into thinking he's his competitor.
He's Roto Rutter and puts Roto Rooter in his description.

I still don't comprehend the tactic but whatever...lol OP..your time can be better spent elsewhere.

[vasskes]

Hi guys,

Thanks for your responses!

We are not trying to trick customer or anyone else. As I mentioned, this site is a competitor in search, but we also work with them - it's an online marketplace and we are one of the top ranked providers there.
By adding the name we were thinking it more of like showing the affiliation. We don't need their name to rank or to trick anybody. Our name is a well known brand already and we rank high for major keywords.
My manager was about to change the meta description and title and decided to try this to show the affiliation and see if it would be helpful.

We are still tracking this now, but will change it probably soon.

Thank again!

[NathanielB]

Hi guys,

Thanks for your responses!

We are not trying to trick customer or anyone else. As I mentioned, this site is a competitor in search, but we also work with them - it's an online marketplace and we are one of the top ranked providers there.
By adding the name we were thinking it more of like showing the affiliation. We don't need their name to rank or to trick anybody. Our name is a well known brand already and we rank high for major keywords.
My manager was about to change the meta description and title and decided to try this to show the affiliation and see if it would be helpful.

We are still tracking this now, but will change it probably soon.

Thank again!

Well without knowing the full store/back ground on this its a little hard to see why you would want or need to add their name to your description.

Either way though, its not going to make any effect on your rankings because the meta description is not used to influence rankings. So in short, if you feel telling searchers that you are affiliated with xyz give it a try and see if it helps with getting more converting visitors to your site, but I can't see it making a difference from what you have told us so far.

[vasskes]

Hi,

Yes I should have explained it better although I did mention in my initial post
But thanks for the response again! We will see if this has helped at all and report later.

Cheers!