Colleges can buy their competitors’ names from search-engine companies and use them to promote their own institutions, a court in British Columbia ruled recently.
The Vancouver Sun reported this week that the Court of Appeal for British Columbia blessed this strategy by upholding a previous ruling by the Supreme Court of British Columbia in favor of several private colleges in Vancouver owned by the Eminata Group.
The suit was brought by the Private Career Training Institutions Agency, which regulates private colleges in British Columbia. Several Eminata-owned colleges, including the Vancouver Career College and the Vancouver College of Art and Design, purchased keyword advertising based on their rivals’ names from search engines such as Google and Yahoo. So whenever anyone searched for the names of the other institutions, links to the two college websites would appear near the top of the list of search results, albeit as “sponsored” links. The agency received complaints from other institutions about the practice, which they argued was misleading advertising that violated the Private Career Training Institutions bylaws, says Karin Kirkpatrick, the agency’s chief executive and registrar.
The Supreme Court found that because the Eminata colleges never misrepresented themselves on their Web sites or in the search results, it didn’t constitute misleading advertising. Students presented as witnesses by the regulatory agency said they had been confused when searches for other institutions turned up Eminata colleges—one student searched for Vancouver Community College and clicked instead on a sponsored link for Vancouver Career College. But the court found that students were “careless” and “imprudent” in their assessment of the search results and didn’t thoroughly investigate what they found.
The Supreme Court compared the actions of the Eminata colleges to those of a business purchasing advertising near information about competitors in the Yellow Pages. The Court of Appeals upheld the findings of the Supreme Court, but it found the Yellow Pages metaphor lacking, arguing that Internet search results defy comparison with previous advertising methods.
Ms. Kirkpatrick says she wasn’t surprised by the decision, especially because there was no legal precedent for the issue, but she still thinks the agency did the right thing in bringing the case. “The fact that we made this issue more public is in the consumer’s best interest,” she says.
Representatives from the Eminata Group did not respond to several inquiries for comment.
The issue of colleges purchasing competitors’ names as keywords isn’t new. The Chronicle previously reported on complaints by many colleges that the University of Phoenix was purchasing their names for sponsored searches. At the time, Phoenix indicated that it had a policy against the practice. A Phoenix representative didn’t respond to a request to confirm that the policy is still in place.
Besides purchasing competitors’ names, some colleges have also purchased keyword advertising for academic programs they don’t actually offer.
Just Thursday, Change.org, a Web site that promotes progressive social issues, released statements by students who charge that Web searches for “registered dietitian” programs led them to Kaplan University’s degree in nutrition science.
But the students couldn’t become a registered dietitians just by earning that degree at Kaplan Inc., a for-profit institution owned by the Washington Post Company, because that program is not accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Dietetics Education. Without that accreditation, students who earn the degree from Kaplan can’t get a dietetic internship or take the commission’s exam, which is required in many states to become a licensed dietitian.
