Brandjacking is a term used to describe the unethical on-line use of brand names for profit. The practice is usually associated with other types of internet fraud such as cyber-squatting. Brandjackers exploit popular brands to drive traffic to their sites without the brand owners permission to do so. The brand hijacking is done in such a way as to make best use of search engine optimisation techniques to give wide visibility of the hijacked brands within the search engine rankings.
The Brandjacking index from MarkMonitor reveals the levels of losses to the hotel industry worldwide from inflated or unnecessary payments of commissions as well as online traffic which is lost to competitors
