Jan.25, 2004

UPDATE: Online campaign gets dirty. In response to the Belinda ads (see Below), a Harper supporter has taken out a bogus ad that slams Belinda, and also encourages surfers to click on Belinda Stronach's ads so it will cost her money. This is a direct violation of Google's ad standards and will likely be removed shortly. The ad slamming Belinda, is linked to Stephen Harper's campaign web site. The owner of the ad purchased keywords "Belinda" and "Belinda Stronach" to trigger the attack ads. The URL listed in the ad "ShesaBillionaireDamnIt.ca is a bogus URL. The real URL in the ad is Stephen Harper's campaign site.

Click Here for a screen shot of the ad

Conservative Party leadership hopeful Belinda Stronach is taking no prisoners when it comes to her all-out web assault to increase her popularity.

Stronach's campaign, which includes full internet exposure, is raising some interesting questions, from a copyright perspective.

Stronach has purchased some very interesting key words from the world's most popular search engine. The key words, which trigger ads for Stronach's leadership campaign include the names of her competitors, as well as the prime minister of Canada's name, Paul Martin.

Other search terms will also trigger Stronach's ads, those key words when typed into the Google search engine include, "Prime Minister", "Canadian Alliance", "Progressive conservative", "Paul Martin", as well as others.

But the most interesting key words purchased by Stronach, include, "Stephen Harper" and "Tony Clement". When these search terms are typed into the Google search engine, Belinda Stronach's leadership campaign ad will appear in the right hand column on the search result page.

Halifax Live has requested a response from Stephen Harper, and Tony Clement on this issue.

See links to screen shots below:

Stephen Harper Click Here

Tony Clement Click Here