Maximizing hits has become a valuable art and a sophisticated science. Practitioners know that search engines can make or break their sites. If a URL fails to appear among the top ten search results, most surfers won't even see it - much less click on it. Hit-based advertising revenue consequently will languish. According to a Dentsu report, Japanese Internet advertising grew 86 percent last year to JPY11 billion.
Many search engines take account of topical information hidden behind the visible text.
Metatags are supplied by site designers in HTML code. A site focusing on the Japanese computer industry might use such key words as computer, Japan, and technology. That's the site designer's trick of repeating primary words and dispersing them across multiple pages of a site. To catch unwary surfers, many designers are tempted to emphasize among their metatags high-traffic terms including the most common word found in Internet searches. While that may be a matter that concerns taste more than law, there may be a temptation for a designer to go even farther and use a competitor's popular trademark, trade name, or product name as a metatag.