An interesting story came to my attention this week. I debated long and hard about whether it made sense to create a blog post about it because I like my blog posts to have a nice and tidy conclusion. This story does not…yet.
Once of my clients is a charity called Rhythmix who do fantastic work helping often underprivileged young people develop their social and personal skills by encouraging them to make music. In the 10 or so years they have been doing this work they have gained national recognition and generally cemented themselves as a worthy and amazing cause whilst helping over 45,000 kids. If you’d like to find out more – pop along to their site at http://rhythmixmusic.org.uk/.
An unfortunate coincidence
Now if (unlike me) you are following the X-Factor this year; you might have had a dim light bulb go off in your mind when you read the word ‘Rhythmix’. Evidently one of the newly formed groups of wannabee popstresses on this year’s rehash of the format, have chosen to go by the name ‘Rhythmix’ themselves, and this has led to an interesting and unfortunate situation for the charity.
Doing the right thing…but not if you’re Simon Cowell
Rhythmix (the charity) do own the trademark of their name, but only for “Educational Purposes”. This has been stated to them very clearly by a cadre of expensive London lawyers, set on them by the people at Xfactor when they had the cheek to get in touch and ask if the show might consider changing the name of the band at this early stage.
They now have a huge problem. Because they also have an association with music (as well as education), they may shortly find themselves getting into a lot of trouble for using their own name in things like gig posters and t-shirts, because of the potential for people to think they are advertising the girl group, as opposed to their own charitable activities. There are in fact some weird similarities here to what happened between the Beatles and Apple – except Apple have a fair few pennies to spend on legal representation – and Rythmix do not.
What is sad is that the nature of the charity is something which should be so close to the show’s heart. Using music to make the lives of children better is unarguably a positive thing – and even more so in the context of Xfactor. But that is not really debate I am interested in. That Simon Cowell’s behemoth has not slowed its irascible consumption of everything, just because a worthy related cause has had the misfortune to become ensnared in its jaws, should not be a surprise to any educated individual. What is interesting is how this crazy coincidence will affect the charity itself.
Fame can be fleeting…we hope
So what’s the big deal you might ask? A quick buzz over the previous Xfactor finalists reveals a number of ‘auspicious’ names. After all – who could forget the incredible “Bad Lashes”? Or the innovatively named “Girlband”? What are the actual chances of “Rhythmix the Band” being anything more than a month’s worth of grubby tenners stuffed into Simon Cowell’s pocket, before sailing off into obscurity? Well that might well happen but sadly, whilst researching this post I noted another band name in the Xfactor finalists listing… You might have heard of them – they’re called JLS and they are doing a pretty good job of taking over the world just now (to what should be our nation’s collective shame). And I guess there’s always ‘Girls Aloud’ too if you want to be really afraid.
Add to that the fact that many of the judges tout the group as “best girl band in the show’s history” and Rhythmix (The Charity) might be shaping up to have a big problem.
What are the consequences of fighting with a giant?
The primary issue here is undoubtedly that Rhythmix the charity may end up having to lose their own name, and will now have to raise a significant amount of money to get their day in court to try to avert that outcome. This is money that they’ll never see again if they don’t win the case and money that would be far better spent if they could just be left alone to help children.
The scope of that argument is far reaching and not something I know enough about legal precedent to address, but from an SEO perspective things might not be as they first appear.
What about SEO?
A secondary but very interesting (well interesting to me) issue occurs when you consider how this will affect the charity’s search engine performance. The incident has had the immediate effect of slaying the rankings on all search engines for the term “Rhythmix” but a quick elaboration to “Rhythmix Charity” still brings them up in second place on Google (second behind a story which is about this exact incident).
Undoubtedly they will lose traffic, and also exposure due to having to fend of this giant meta competitor… Or will they?
As a user of Google – I understand that when hit number 1 of my search doesn’t bring up what I am looking for, I need to elaborate into more key words to return the subject of my search in the right context. Surely we can count on a nation of youth workers, teachers and social workers to command sufficient intelligence to try one more search for “Rhythmix charity”, as opposed to being subsumed forever into fan pages for a girl band (and then presumably forgetting why they had sat down in the first place).
Further to that, the majority of people won’t be Googling for “Rhythmix” anyway because if they already know the name of the charity there’s a very good chance that they have been given the web address too.
In my view the charity will be gaining a huge amount more fresh traffic from a term like “Youth Music Charity” (for which they currently rank 3rd). With a small amount of extra tweaking to their onsite copy they could look to improve this already solid ranking even further.
And there may also be some rather impressive hidden benefits to fighting with a giant. How many small articles in the wider web or on Facebook & Twitter now sport back-links to the Rythmix charity website? Google loves back-links and will be happily promoting them in all its algorithms as we speak because of this influx of interest on the web.
The bigger the story gets, the better the profile of the Charity will become. And not just on Google either, after all everybody loves an underdog (and everybody hates Simon Cowell – that’s the point of him).
Only time, end of year performance figures, and hopefully a swift and just court hearing, will reveal the truth of the impact on Rhythmix (the charity), but I would advise them (as a long term client and as friends) to take heart and remember that it’s a very ill wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good.
What have we learned?
A number of things I suppose. But I hope that the main thing is that search engines pretty much behave as you would expect them too. Ambiguous requests lead to inaccurate results and we will always be dependent on the user to add further context if they don’t see what they wanted to in the first instance.
Ranking first on your company name is the iron pyrite of search engine management. It’s definitely a nice-to-have for those users who still haven’t learned that you can actually just type a web address into the bar at the top, but even they will have the common sense to add context to their search in the end, and arrive at the correct destination. If a user knows the name of your organisation they’ll find you in the end with or without the help of Google. If you want a search engine to bring you fresh eyes or new business, you need to think holistically about your content and the behaviour of your prospective visitors.
This incident goes to show that external factors over which we have no say, can come into play at any time and affect our search engine rankings drastically. But then all search engine management is a factor outside of our control at the end of the day. I don’t know exactly how Google decides on page rankings – no-one does. All we can do is take an intelligent stab at ensuring that the content on our sites is user-friendly, accurate and written in plain English. And as long as we do so we give everyone on the web a fair chance to use their brains and find exactly what they were looking for.
The exact workings of a search engine will always be a dark magic but holistic on-site search engine optimisation should not be. Anyone who says otherwise is basically trying to sell you snake-oil. If you’d like to know more about how we can improve your search engine rankings please drop us a line and we’ll be glad to chat.
Crowd wish Rhythmix (The Charity) the very best of luck in this fight and genuinely hope that the all the positive outcomes above come to pass (and that the terrible girl band go the way of “Futureproof” “Hope” & “Same Difference”).
UPDATE: It gives me great pleasure to report that the charity seem to have won! Good on them – now they really can sit back and reap the SEO rewards that brief notoriety can bring!