One of my brothers and I are opening a new website, Free Home Shop, to the public tomorrow. A few weeks ago, while looking for good places on my other sites to link to it from, I asked another brother if we could link from his title insurance website. His response surprised me–title insuance companies are banned by law (at least in Utah) from advertising for, or getting advertising from, companies that generate title business (eg. real estate, mortgage, and such businesses).

I can only imagine that the purpose of such laws is to protect customers from getting locked into a particular title company if they get their mortgage from a particular broker, etc. But as an internet guy myself, cross promotion between complimentary products is such a natural thing to me that the ban seems absurd.

So we settled for a link from one of my brother’s other sites (he’s a lawyer too).