NRMA Insurance’s SEO policy: Linking to us is forbidden
As a law-abiding citizen, Dr Mumbo of course always checks the terms and conditions of a website before using it.
So imagine the terror struck into his heart by the NRMA Insurance website. If you want a quote, you have to agree that a string of activities are verboten.
The first few are sensible enough. Until you have to promise that you won’t disseminate any data from the site. Which immediately means that Dr Mumbo sadly can’t tell his mates about the brilliant quote he got.
Event Cinemas thankfully has similar web centric Terms & Conditions:
Linking:
You must not create a hyperlink to this web site unless we give you our express permission in writing.
http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Terms
Maybe it’s an SEO strategy to get more links?
Seems crazy, but I’m sure none of these sites enforce the linking rule. And yeah, how annoyed would the SEO teams be if they did! What a joke, that’s lawyers for you…
Hilarious! No doubt some poor SEO is tearing his hair out at the insanity.
Is it against the T&C and disseminating data to say you can’t link to the site?
Sounds like a great link bait plan to get some high value links & comments.
If so – good idea.
/y0z
Love the link title tags by the way.
/y0z
This is when legal risk minimisation and marketing strategy collide
OMG That is funny. Thank you Dr Mumbo. Nice link titles too.
Well half decent link bait strategy if you guys are linking to them…
Am I allowed *not* to use the website but link to them? Surely the website terms of use only apply if I am on the NRMA site?
I’ve seen affiliate campaigns where “no use of the clients brand” was allowed in copy. This meant that someone could write an entire web review of [mobile phones] and they would not be allowed to mention [vodafone]. Let’s not forget, this only applied to people promoting [vodafone].
There was a great case in the UK where ToysRus had t’s and c’s that banned anyone who used any PPC from linking to ToysRus. So you had a choice, either turn off all of your AdWords campaigns (and not just in the toys vertical) or just not promote them.
I think this page might have a bit of link juice Tim. Thanks to your link NRMA is now ranking page 2 of Google for “prohibited” http://screencast.com/t/lgu1DS6v2Rp
Good work!
This policy has been on NRMA’s terms & conditions for at least a year.. OLD