Ah, the temptation. Find a competitor who is doing well in the SERPs, and instead of trying to beat them in the organic searches, just purchase their name in Adwords. Watch the visitors start pouring in, as well as maybe a lawsuit. And thus you have “Edina Realty, Inc. v. TheMLSonline.com”.

Looks like the temptation was a little much for TheMLSonline.com. After buying up a bunch of “Edina Realty” related keywords from Google and Yahoo, TheMLSonline.com must of felt they had it made when the visitors started pouring in thinking they were going to get information related to “Edina Realty”.

I would find it hard to believe that the visitors didn’t find it a little irritating that the link had nothing to do with the Adwords that were displayed. Seems to be a good way to loose whatever customer loyalty you may have. But it did give them a sudden burst of visitors followed by a lawsuit that has put their own name on the map now.

Maybe this is the new wave of Internet advertisement. Once again I as well as thousand of other people now know a couple new websites we had never heard of before, due to the miracle of lawsuits.

Got your interest, well Eric Goldman provides a good analysis of the case in his blog at Edina Realty v. TheMLSonline.