Bidding on a competitor’s keywords to trigger your search ads is a strategy that I discourage because it can often lead to an escalating “arms race” whereby your competitors will begin to bid up your keywords in retaliation. Thus, you start a war… and are you really positioned and funded to outlast the competition?

Instead, refocus your time, money and energy on optimizing your campaigns and being a neutral player.  This way you can avoid the lawsuits.

Read what 1800 Contacts has been doing over the past few years – suing just about everyone. How much has it paid to its attorneys and employees to pursue these? $50 million? How about putting that money towards sales and marketing. Would it be in a better position having spent that money on legal pursuits or sales and marketing? What do you think?

Here’s the article: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=153210&nid=128337