EXCLUSIVE: Major SEO War Looms As Konga Buys ‘Jumai’ Domain Name

Let’s admit this: we’re all at war.

Remember when Dealfish hijacked the word ‘jobberman’ in its Google Adwords campaign and claimed it was not a deliberate attempt or attack on their competition, Jobberman?

And how we exclusively reported that Rocket Internet has been registering ‘Konga’, its major competitor’s domain name in at least 10 countries including South Africa (konga.co.za) and Kenya (konga.co.ke) since June 2012?

We’ve just learned from a tip-off that Konga may now be involved in the SEO war against its major competitor, Jumia, as it has purchased the ‘Jumai’ domain name (jumai.com.ng) — as of January 17, 2013 — which now redirects to Konga.com, and could remain so for the next five years or more.

Update: 17/01/2014 — The domain name Jumai.com.ng doesn’t redirect to Konga.com any longer.

With both companies having recently been linked with possible merger talks, one could easily think that they’re just fond of each other.

In case you don’t know, ‘jumai’ has been a top search keyword on Google since Jumia was launched last September, and shows up varied key phrases such as ‘jumai online store’, jumai fashion’, and ‘jumai website’ when users search for the word ‘jumai’, perhaps mistaken it for ‘jumia’.

Some news media sites have not even helped, as newspaper sites like The Punch and Financial Technology Africa have headlines that read: Jumai instead of Jumia, which may have increased the likelihood that users would be searching for ‘jumai’, instead of ‘jumia’.

Or maybe they’ve noticed that ‘jumai’ is now a top search keyword. Heck, yeah, our headline and tags for this post are riding on the back of the keyword for SEO and SEM purposes. Why not?

While we’re not sure, Konga may also be using ‘jumai’ as a keyword in its Google AdWords campaign, although several searches we did couldn’t reveal Konga’s website on the search results.

But whatever the case, these anti-competitive moves from both companies in recent times may just be what it takes to start a major SEO war in Nigeria which could see companies targeting the domain and brand names of their competitors.

Or maybe we’re just being paranoid about these tussles that may just go away without any issues between the companies involved.

In the meantime, we’ve reached out to Konga and Jumia for their comment and would bring you more updates as we know more.