Rubbish link baiting - legalilities ahead?

Someone left some comments on New Year's Eve against two posts.

After looking at the source - which the commenter provided - and some links in the text, because the comments were poor and off-message, it turns out that a string of blogs have been created using existing travel company brand names.

There is, some might argue, nothing wrong with that. But the blogs are not content-driven and exist only to scrape some revenue out of Google AdWords.

The same person/organisation, it appears, has created the following blogs:

BestAtTravel.Blogspot.com [which has nothing to do with BestAtTravel]
DialAFlight.Blogspot.com [ditto Dial-A-Flight]
Travel-Republic.Blogspot.com [ditto TravelRepublic]
Travel-Supermarket.Blogspot [ditto TravelSupermarket]

It beggars belief that these make any money from AdWords, so what's the point?

Well it also looks like someone holds a bit of a grudge at least against one of the companies.

In a post (one of two) on the BestAtTravel blog, there is a link to a "blog" about BestAtTravel's co-founder, Rita Sharma, which many would conclude has been created by the same source.

The content is not very complimentary - and a decent lawyer would have a reasonably good chance of bringing about a libel case against the content owner.

All very messy and unhelpful.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Honourable mentions

The honour system has been rather blemished in recent months following the police investigation into the so-called Cash-For-Peerages scandal involving UK political parties.

But while the Westminster Village drawls at the prospect of prime minister Tony Blair getting himself into a right legal pickle over the issue, five members of the travel industry can celebrate this evening after finding themselves singled out in the latest New Year Honours.

Grabbing CBEs are Michael Gooley, chairman of Trailfinders, and Stephen Ridgway, chief executive of Virgin Atlantic.

OBEs have been handed to Anthony Cairns, deputy chair of Leeds-Bradford International Airport, and Rita Sharma, the managing director of the BestAtTravel website.

Last but not least, John Grey, head shoe shiner at Virgin Atlantic, has been awarded a MBE.

Say what you like about execs of big companies getting honoured by Her Majesty (or is that the government?) for services to a particular industry, it is nice to see someone at the coal face of a company, like Grey, receiving some recognition.

Ridgway was pretty nice about it too:

"Of the two of us, I suspect John has been more influential in helping to look after our passengers."

Full list of honours here on the BBC website

Kevin May, editor, Travolution