Sea of (fake) shoes

There’s only one problem: none of it is likely to make a significant difference. StopFakeLouboutin.com details legal actions the label has launched against counterfeiters, from raiding Chinese factories, to seizing inventory from online resellers before they could sell the fakes on auction sites.

But the biggest problem is Louboutin’s own site. Outside of gaming and fashion, most commercial brands have abandoned the all-Flash website in favor of more accessible technology that makes the content available to a wider audience, including search engines and mobile browsers. With Apple’s decision to not support Flash on the iPhone or iPad, one might hope that even online and fashion would move towards the best practice of using flash only for certain elements (like video).

Unfortunately, many labels remain stuck in the year 2000, and assault visitors with music and video that plays unprompted, enormous Flash sites that take minutes to download even on broadband (forget about a mobile connection), and no clear way for visitors or search spiders to navigate the sites outside of flashing images that force you to chase them around the screen to find out what they’re about. According to Google’s Search Keyword Tool, 12,000 mobile users search for “Christian Louboutin” each month. While that may not seem like a huge amount of people compared to the 1.8 million web users who search for the brand, that’s still 12,000 people who wouldn’t be able to find retailer information or addresses, style information or anything else on the official Louboutin website, because it’s not designed in a way that would allow mobile visitors to see anything. Search spiders? They’re seeing the same nothingness.

Is it any wonder visitors abandon official sites in favor of counterfeiters who offer a wide array of shoes, ready to purchase with a click of the mouse?

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because it is. We looked at similar issues plaguing Louis Vuitton’s search results, but it appears Louboutin is following a similar, expensive path which will end with no better results. You see, in addition to the video of fake Louboutins being run over by a bulldozer, the site lists recent legal victories. While shutting down the warehouses that manufacture the fake shoes is a smart move, listing websites selling fakes is probably not the best idea.

In what has to be a bit of unintended irony, the simple HTML references to the sites mean that there’s a better chance of Google and other search engines indexing the content of those sites before they “see” anything on Louboutin’s official site.

Louboutin is obviously in the shoe business, not the internet business, so we don’t hold it against him that there’s been a bit of a learning curve. We wish the company the best in protecting their brand against counterfeiters, but if they spent half the amount dedicated to legal costs to building a modern, accessible site the battle might take a fraction of the effort to win.

Otherwise, it turns into an endless game of whack-a-mole (with much prettier moles, of course) where one fake site goes down, and another pops up weeks later.

Louis Vuitton had asserted that Google’s practice of allowing anyone to bid on trademarked names opened the door to the sale of counterfeit items. In the US and the UK, the system even extended the right to advertisers to include trademarked brands within their ads. So if you were to search for “Louis Vuitton”, nothing would prevent Chanel from running an ad saying “Louis Vuitton is good, but Chanel is great.” That’s only an example, the luxury houses seem to have a gentleman’s agreement to not bid on their rivals names, even if the practice is legal.

While the new ruling protects Google’s ability to sell trademarked search terms, it does reverse a previous ruling which opened the doors to allowing advertisers to include trademarked names within search results. The European Court of Justice decided that advertisers who don’t make it clear that they aren’t commercially affiliated with the trademark holder can find themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit from the brand.

This case settled trademark issues with paid search marketing,  but it also exposes the failings of Louis Vuitton and other brands when it comes to online reputation management and search engine optimization.

In US search results, all but two of the unpaid listings go to replica (read: counterfeit) sites. The two exceptions? The official Louis Vuitton site, and the brand’s Wikipedia entry. With the recent headlines, news and shopping search results push anything beyond the 2nd organic listing down, and depending on location so too does a map. Since Google doesn’t accept money for these algorithmically selected results, they don’t have the same responsibility to police what the sites sell, but there’s little doubt that the $219 purses offered at the second site listed are not authentic.

A local search result appearing to California users searching for "Louis Vuitton"

A closer look at the local results show that even there, replica sites are leading the listings. In the case of this local search result in California, they appear ahead of actual Louis Vuitton stores. In France, where trademark laws are more stringent and have favored brands more heavily, the results aren’t as bad: only four of the top 10 results go to replica websites, and half of the top listings go to authentic Louis Vuitton sites or to LVMH’s corporate site. The results in Germany, Italy and many other European countries are similar.

Even this, however, may simply be a matter of luck. If replica sites were ever to translate their content to target the approximately 5.7 million searches done outside the US, there’s a strong chance that their search ranking success could be replicated in higher positions in more non-English language searches.

To understand why this is a failing on the part of Louis Vuitton, you have to take a look at other luxury brands who’ve made online marketing a cornerstone of their branding strategy. While Louis Vuitton hasn’t exactly been sitting on the sidelines – Nowness, live runway broadcasts and other initiatives signal a real effort at strengthening their digital offerings, a look at more tech entrenched rivals show cracks in a strategy that does not consider organic search optimization.

Worldwide, Google puts the estimated number of searches for Chanel at 13 million, 9 million for Louis Vuitton and 6 million for Burberry.

Chanel, which only began selling beauty products online in recent years, and just announced plans to sell handbags online, is surprisingly strong in results. Local results show only actual Chanel boutiques, in the US, paid search ads direct users to authorized beauty retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus. There are only 2 ads for replica websites, and of the 6 results that don’t go to official Chanel websites, 4 point to information websites like Wikipedia, About.com (a biography on Coco Chanel) and the Purse Blog.

For Burberry, who has made a strong online effort with livestream broadcasts and social media via the Art of the Trench, the results are even better. A mere 3 sites in the top 10 results are not owned by Burberry. Of those 3, two (ShopStyle and Wikipedia) point back to authorized resellers. The paid search listings are dominated by retailers, like Net-a-Porter and the Outnet, selling authentic products and not a single replica website rears its ugly head on the first page.

So what should Louis Vuitton do to reclaim their results?

Put a strategy in place that recognizes branding does not conquer all, especially when it comes to search.

While shuttering eLuxury to focus on Nowness may have been an exercise in branding, it was a mistake as far as search. The top result for anyone looking for eLuxury is now a poorly designed counterfeit site, while eluxury.com still has thousands of links from people who haven’t updated their list of authentic Louis Vuitton purchase points.

Partner up.

The only way Louis Vuitton will win the battle against counterfeiters is to embrace online partners who have a vested interest in promoting the brand. We can already hear the screams of terror about loss of control coming from luxury fanatics, but allow us to explain. Chanel, a company whose brand is as tightly controlled as any other luxury house, has done it through fragrance and beauty products. Bergdorf Goodman, Saks, Neiman Marcus are all selling the same goods, at the same prices. But it’s in their best interest to ensure that fake bottles of Chanel No 5 aren’t further diluting their opportunity at sales.

Louis Vuitton would be smart to explore distribution of sunglasses and small non-handbag accessories with online partners. eLuxury used to be that place for blogs and smaller websites, but Net-a-Porter, Saks, Neiman Marcus and many others could step in to bolster authentic distribution points without eating into market share for key items like handbags and luggage.

For Burberry, it’s distributing content through multiple media partners – fashion blogs and general interest sites alike. Very likely part of the reason live.burberry.com, the home of the brand’s livestream runway shows, appears in the top 10 results on a search of their brand name.

We understand the need to aggressively protect the brand against infringement, but all the trademark enforcements in the world will not be enough to replace an online strategy that fails to include search marketing at its core.