According to Adam at Jumba, MD Web Hosting is Australia’s 2^nd largest budget hosting company, with SmartyHost the biggest and Jumba trailing behind.

However it appears SmartyHost might be a bit nervous with MD Web Hosting. Or may just want to make some quick bucks at someone’s downfall.

First of all, MD Web Hosting had some availability issue with their US-based servers over the past few days. So I searched mdwebhosting on Google Australia. Sure, they came out first in SERP. But interestingly who has placed the highest bid on Google AdWords for this keyword.

SmartyHost paid the most for the top spot, posing a question “Is your website down?” and offering web hosting in an Aussie data centre. Perth-based Ilisys also asked “Need a new web host?”, offering site migration for free.

Is that the usual practise in the web hosting industry, gaining at your competitor’s downfall?

Updates

Apparently this “phenomenon” does not just apply to MD Web Hosting. Provoking your competitors on AdWords is common place in web hosting industry, excuse my naiveness. For example,

• Search for “Jumba”, we get Unlimited-Space.com.au’s ad ‘Sick of Jumba-Hosting? You’re not the only one… We’re the “Jumba Alternative”’.
• Search for “SmartyHost”, and we get MD Web Hosting strikes back with ‘Paying too much? Get genuine local Australian…’.
• Let’s go international. Search for “DreamHost”, and phpwebhosting.com asks ‘dreamhost outage?’

Put in any major web hosting company’s name, and you are pretty much guaranteed to get competitors’ ads trying to “help you out”. Oh boy.