Aide-Memoire
Here’s an excellent example of a legal or marketing department (or both) who don’t seem to get how the internet & search engines work.
Further, it shows a real disconnect between the kind of content on the site and the policies supporting the site.
Wonder why they bothered putting all that funky interactive content on their site if they don’t want anyone to link to it? Hey *Vegemite – perhaps it’s time to revisit your policy?
Vegemite’s Ass-Backward Web Philosophy: Don’t Link to Us
What Was It Thinking With This Privacy Policy?
Posted by Abbey Klaassen on September 11, 2009 @ 03:17 PM
Here’s one for the annals of marketer stupidity.
As BoingBoing points out today (after noticing it on Tetherd Cow Ahead), Kraft’s Vegemite site has perhaps one of the most backward privacy policies known to man and marketer. It forbids anyone from linking to it.
Yes, you read that right — you might actually like Vegemite, you might appreciate the recipes on its site, you might find useful the “Kids Corner” section where it offers up Vegemite-themed classroom activities for grade-school teachers — but don’t even think about giving any link love. With links being an integral piece of a search strategy, perhaps that’s why Vegemite’s own site wallows in the bottom half of a Google search, below videos and shopping links. (Sneaking on the first page of search results for the brand? The BoingBoing post that highlights the ridiculous linking policy, which shows just how beneficial a smart linking policy can be for SEO.)
via adage.com
* I am ready for the Vegemite jokes that suggest this is all part of a plan to save the world from this product 
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
Actually it’s in the T&Cs, not the privacy policy. I would provide a link, but apparently they don’t want that
It looks like the lawyers had a field day with the terms of service on this Vegemite site. Actually, I’m not sure if they are saying you can’t link to it or rather than it can be linked to another site (e.g. iframed). However, its the rest of the T&Cs that put me off, particularly the sections covering materials you submit to them and ‘Social Media Sites’. Its a pity there isn’t some common sense legal baseline for protecting organisations and individuals that host Websites with user generated content so we can do away with these types of ridiculous T&Cs (or at least make them shorter). Of course if they were really serious, you would have to acknowledge the T&Cs every time you entered the site.
BTW What is going to happen now that you’ve lined to them?