AdWords and Trademarks – It May Not Be What You Think

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Brian

Are you familiar with Google AdWords policy on Trademarks in advertisements placed on Google or throughout the Google network? You may think you know their policy on Trademarks, and you might, but just to be sure read on and consult Google’s policy.

Background on AdWords & Trademarks

Google AdWords
Google AdWords allows you to place an advertisement on their site or across their network. You pay when people click your advertisement, what is known as Pay Per Click (PPC). They also provide display advertising and video advertisements. Most of the advertising is text.

Trademarks
Instead of getting into the details of trademarks and service marks here is some reference material. In the United States there are three levels of rights to be aware of. First of all there is common law that may afford you rights in a mark through use of the mark, then there is State by state registration (more here at FindLaw), and finally federal registration of Trademarks from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

AdWords and Your Trademark

Let us assume your Trademark is Kleenex. You may not want anyone to be using your trademark in their advertisements for a variety of reasons. This is a common issue with advertisers that have affiliates and they tell their affiliates they cannot bid on keywords or phrases that have their trademark such as Kleenex. Many people believe you can simply tell Google not to allow others to put your trademark in their advertisement or bid on your trademark as a keyword. Then Google will not allow it. If that is what you assumed, that is not entirely correct.

From Google’s policy note the following:

Please note the regions where we will investigate ad text only. We will not disable keywords in response to a trademark complaint in these regions.

So they will investigate use of your trademark within the advertisement text however they will NOT disable the bidding of your trademark as a keyword. This means that if your trademark was Kleenex competitors of yours could bid on the keyword Kleenex. When someone searches on the word Kleenex your competitors can place an advertisement such as “Buy the best tissues around, get them here”. Here on the Google AdWords policy on Trademarks there are two links that expand. One that shows the regions that they investigate ad text only and those that they investigate ad text and keywords. Note that in the United States they only investigate ad text and not the keywords, also note that in most regions they only investigate ad text. There are probably many reasons why, one of course being the fact that the more keywords people can bid on the more money they can make and trademarks just may be a significant chunk of revenue.

Most importantly you need to understand how Google does and does not assist you with Trademark monitoring.

New Google Sitelinks

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Brian

The Google sitelinks you see in search results have changed. They are much more detailed and one could argue more useful. You can read about all the benefits in a google webmaster post about the sitelinks. But before you search note you will not always see them. One way to see them for a site is to do a search on their brand or company name.

Example Search
For example I searched for a companies name, in this case it was C3 Cyber Club which is the name of the company.

Notice that there are two columns of links, as before. However each link has much more information than it used to. They also provide the address. In this case I was able to map directions to them without even clicking into their site. They also provide related images. As a site owner you need to take note of how your information is being displayed as this is an opportunity to provide users with the information they seek.

PPC Bidding and Violations

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Brian

If you have ever wondered why advertisers ask that you do not bid on their brand name there are multiple reasons. If you bid using Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on search engines you may have seen a message like this:

We have seen a lot of publishers bidding on our brand name. If you are bidding on our brand name or any variation of it please pause your campaign immediately! From now on we will strictly enforce our terms. To prevent any discomfort please make sure you are not violating our program terms.

There may be many reasons why they prefer you do not bid on their brand name and one is due to it being a Trademark. As an owner of a trademark you do not want others using that trademark. You need to control the usage of the mark and assure that no one is trying to profit from your good will and the value you have created around that mark. The owner of the mark prefers that they, and they alone, control the advertisements that appear when their mark is searched for. This allows them to control the advertisements and the pages that are shown after an advertisement is clicked. The owner of the mark does not want their mark to be diluted or seen in a negative light for any reason. Allowing many affiliates to bid on their name and present websites as if it is the owner of the marks site, takes away the control of the content from the mark owner.

I have received questions about the bidding of brand names and why advertisers care, hopefully this explains it.

SES New York 2011

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Brian

March 21 – 25th, 2011 at the Hilton NY
The years first SES event will be at the Hilton in New York from March 21st to the 25th. From their email about the event:

… SES is taking the lead in dissecting the new online marketing landscape and figuring out what it means for you. SES continues to be the industry’s leading forum, delivering marketers the broadest scope from which to view the industry and learn to fully integrate all the dimensions of search, taking advantage of all the possibilities.

The best prices are found here if you register prior to Jan 21st.

Google Product Search for the Holidays

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Brian

Holidays and Product Searching
One of my favorite reads is the Google blog and they just wrote about their Improvements to Product Search for this holiday season which explains their product search but also has some interesting facts. For example, regarding retail purchases here is a quote:

According to a study by Forrester while 93 percent of retail purchases today happen in a store, more than 46 percent of those in-store purchases are influenced by online research.

It is amazing to think that while e-commerce is growing substantially it is still a small piece of the overall market with plenty of growth.

Google Product Search
If you have not already, try the Google Product Search which provides information about individual products in a whole new way. You can go directly to the URL or click the “Shopping” tab on the left of your regular google search. The product search is a great idea. The results are not a website with a description but a product picture, information, review information, price information, and more. You can quickly comparison shop for products at multiple locations.

The information can be show in typical list form or much like an e-commerce site. You can also sort by category, price and by store. What is very interesting is the ability to only show those items with certain characteristics such as Free Shipping or even those items that are In stock nearby. For the in stock items they have currently partnered with over 70 retail brands to obtain this information.

Want to Feel Better About Your Shopping?
Fire up your smart phone and use the product search when you are in a store to assure you are getting a good deal. If not, then order it online while in the store and have it shipped, get a coffee, then people watch and it will come to you.

For Advertisers
What this means for advertisers is that you can compete with the larger stores. You can have your products for sale appear along side those from retailers that you could never open a store next to in a mall. But now you can have potential purchasers see your prices next to the larger retailers. Learn more at the Google Retail Blog.

Reach 28 Percent of the Market with Yahoo and Microsoft

Posted on October 14, 2010 by Brian

28% Market Reach
You can now reach 28% of the online searches through search engine marketing using the newly combined Yahoo and Microsoft. The stat comes from the recent search engine market share report by Comscore. They still split up the statistics between Yahoo and Microsoft even though the advertising platforms are merging. The reach is Yahoo at 16.7% and Microsoft at 11.2% making the combined total 27.9%. Assuming you can advertise to that audience through the platform that reaches both and you can get to 28% of the market through search engine marketing.

Clickable Discusses Microsoft and Yahoo Search Alliance

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Brian

Search Alliance
Clickable provides a PPC (pay per click) tool for online advertising. They announced a webcast to discuss the alliance between Microsoft and Yahoo search. This is a free webcast.

Date: October 13
Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm EST (11:00am-12:00pm) PST
Register Here

From Clickable:
What You’ll Learn:

* Overview of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance and what it means
* Implications and benefits of the search alliance for advertisers
* Updates on feature differences between platforms

Expert Presenters:

Opening Remarks:

* Erik Suhonen, Director, Americas BD & Partnerships, Yahoo!

Presenters:

* Jon Mette, Senior Strategist, Search Optimization & Strategy, Yahoo!
* Lauren Hufnal, Account Executive, Search Agency Sales, Microsoft
* Chris Sanger, Director, Product Management, Yahoo!
* Shamit Patel, Product Manager, Microsoft

Clickable Host/Moderator:

* Max Kalehoff, VP Marketing, Clickable (moderator)

Microsoft AdCenter and Yahoo Search go Bing

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Brian

Search Marketing with Microsoft and Yahoo
If you have been search marketing on both Bing and Yahoo you will soon, according to Microsoft, be using the Microsoft Advertising adCenter to manage your campaigns on both Yahoo! Search and Bing. If you only use Yahoo Search then you will need to brush up on a few differences with the adCenter interface.

Migration to Microsoft adCenter
Here are a few of the reminders from Microsoft:

• adCenter allows you to bid separately for singular/plural variations and common misspellings of keywords, giving you more granular control over your ROI.
• There are three match types in adCenter: exact, phrase, and broad match. When you transition your Yahoo! campaigns to adCenter, advanced match keywords will be set to broad match, and standard match keywords will be set to exact match.
• You can specify unique bids for each match type, to align bids to match type performance. For example, you can bid more for exact match keywords for your core products and services, to help you reach highly qualified potential customers.
• As more and more Yahoo! advertisers begin using adCenter, you may see an increase in the number of advertisers bidding on your keywords, which could affect your ad’s position.
• If your ad’s position has gone down due to increased competition, consider adjusting your bids and setting incremental bids as needed to help meet your objectives.

My favorite reminder is the last one that basically says “spend more money with us” haha.

Migration Over Time
They mentioned the full transition will be in October, late October. So be sure to log into both accounts constantly until you are sure Yahoo Search is turned off. They also have a webinar on Wednesday, September 29, at 11 am Pacific Time, where Yahoo! and Microsoft experts will walk you through the transition tool.

comScore Search Engine Rankings August 2010

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Brian

Search Rankings
The following are August search results. Ask surprised me. I did not realize how much market share they had. Ask is known as Ask Network and they had 3.8% of explicit core searches. Google had 65.4% market share, Yahoo! Sites had 17.4%, Microsoft sites had 11.1%, and AOL LLC had 2.3%. Obviously everyone talks about Google being the largest, however I posted these results to point out that they are only 2/3′s of the market.

Comscore defines an Explicit Core Search as such:

*“Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not
reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.

Google Caffeine is Here and Crack is Next

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Brian

Google announced they have a new search index. On their blog, 6/8/10, they talk about the new index named Caffeine. Read all about it here. Here is a quote:

Today, we’re announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered.

Good News
I cannot think of any reason this is bad. Would you believe that it takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. By the way, I love that quote above that “..Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results..” I also love this image below as it visually shows how I feel on caffeine as well.

My Prediction
My prediction is that while the new index is 50x better and codenamed Caffeine, the next index will be 500x better and codenamed Crack. They will also provide a spokesperson, former Mayor Marion-CrackBarry – who by the way had the name CrackBarry before it was made cool by the BlackBerry device (with a slightly different spelling).

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