An extraordinary exchange has taken place this morning between David Kemp, marketing manager of Blooming Good Jobsand Simon Devitt, on-line marketing head for Haymarket Publishing.
David Kemp left a comment left in the post saying: "We are, quite frankly, surprised that they [Hort Week] should stoop so low."
Hort Weeks Horticulture Jobs site had bid on Google Adwords for the term 'blooming good jobs' which means that anyone searching on Google for the site 'Blooming Good Job' will be presented with a sponsored link at the top of the page. This raises the likelihood of that searcher clicking on that link and being sent to the Horticulture Jobs site.
Just one hour and nine minutes later, Simon Devitt responded by accusing Blooming Good Jobs of employing the same tactics using the search term 'Horticulture Jobs'.
"A small case of pot and kettle I feel. Maybe if users would like to do a search on google for horticulture jobs they will find an advert titled Horticulture Jobs which funnily enough directs users to Blooming Good jobs. This ad has been running on and off for several months prompting the Horticulturejobs adert on Blooming good jobs.
"We have no desire to escalate this further and so have now removed our advert on the Bloominggoodjobs search result, said, Simon (horticulturejobs)"
Read the full post here: Landscape Juice versus Horticulture Week.
I am not sure if Simon Devitt is right here. Blooming Good Jobs is, under normal circumstances, not a normal search term and quite clearly a brand name - horticulture jobs however, is a much more general search criteria.
I telephoned Blooming Good Jobs for a chat with David Kemp but he was unavailable because he was at home on leave.
It is not the first time that Hort Week has been embroiled in controversy and only recently, I was banned from joining any debate, despite HW saying that everyone was welcome, as a blogger on their new website.
What do you think? Is Hort Week trying to punch above its weight in an attempt to dominate the UK horticulture space or just trying to defend themselves in a fiercely competitive market?
Update: In the original headline I said that David Kemp 'accused' Hort Week of poaching. David Kemp pointed out that he did not actually say that and has asked for the headline to be changed.
Further reading: Content is key but conversation is King
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