Word-of Mouth Advertising Restricted in UK

On May 26, 2008, regulations restricting solicited “word-of-mouth” marketing online became effective in the UK. The regulations stipulate that companies or organisations that hire people to market their services must always be clear that they are being paid to promote a service or product. This means that marketers and bloggers can no longer pose as consumers and offer biased opinions to would be fellow consumers.

The parameters of marketing ethics can be discussed ad nauseam and the implications of such regulations would make for an interesting debate. In my opinion, no company trying to build a serious brand would risk their reputation by employing such short-term and morally questionable tactics.

Certainly in the earlier days of search engine optimisation, however, companies that I worked for employed link builders to pose as consumers on forums and chat rooms and leave a link trail back to the client’s product. Google has become smarter and has far more stringent means of determining the value and authenticity of links. Forums and bloggers have become smarter and filters now keep out a lot of the would-be “fake links”. Link building is a feasible way of improving your natural rankings on Google and other search engines but make sure you or your agency are giving you quality links that are recognised by Google.

All that aside, it is somewhat worrying that such regulations have the potential to seriously curb our freedom of speech. Let’s say I recommend one of my clients products via my blog or even have a link to a clients’ website from my facebook profile. If I don’t explicitly say that they are my client would I be liable for a massive fine for offering ‘biased’ opinions? It’s a fine line and I don’t think that it’s a line that will ever clearly be drawn.