Posted on Monday 7th of April 2008 at 06:46 in Make Money Online

Google allows trademark keyword bidding in the UK - the beginning of the end for PPC?

This is a really strange move from Google and I can only imagine they're doing it to make their life easier. Keyword bidding on registered trademarks is a big no-no at the moment but from May 5th, UK advertisers are going to be allowed to do it.

What is it?
It's essentially Audi advertising their cars by bidding on BMW keywords; so if I search for "new BMW M3", Audi's results can appear in the sponsored results bit of Google. So this means that if I start my own computer shop, I can try to steal Dell's business by bidding on the "Dell" keyword.

This is bad for affiliates
You'd be forgiven for thinking that affiliates will be loving this; but the reality is that 90% of proper affiliate schemes have terms and conditions applied to them that state you cannot display the advert as a result based on searches on their trademark. So for Dell it means I cannot show my result if the user searches for "Dell". However Google changing their policy means that I *could* if Dell would let me. Which they won't.

Therefore affiliates are in the same boat they were always in; but individual shops with an Internet presence will do better because they can piggy-back off the popularity of bigger brands. Therefore if I started "Seopher Computers" I could genuinely bid against "Dell" and "Packard Bell" to promote my own brand.

This is bad for the brand-owners
Okay so imagine I own Dell. Currently I can buy Dell keywords for next-to-nothing (as I'm the only person who can) - so it's a tiny CPC but great click throughs and conversions. What happens when anyone else can bid for them? Suddenly my own trademark becomes competitive and lucrative by extension.

What are they doing? Are they trying to push people to natural search? I assume not considering how much money Adwords makes them, but I can't see a real reason for doing so otherwise. It just looks like Google is trying to kill PPC... Check out the original story in NMA.

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Showing most recent 3 of 3 comments

Google has always allowed anyone to bid on trademark keywords, you just cannot use trademarks in your ad copy, which violates IP and fair competition laws. Unless the big companies had a backdoor deal with Google until now, this is the way it has always been, as I have been able to bid on trademarks and people can bid on my trademarks. When I file for infringement on my trademarks with Google it keeps people from using them in their ad copy, but not bidding on the keyword itself.

For instance, Audi can bid on BWM, so long as their ad title and copy never has "BMW" in it. But if they said "Do you like BWM’s? You’ll like this better!" then that would not be allowed and is enforceable.

by Atalus on Tuesday 15th of July 2008 at 04:06

There is a site that monitors trademark bidding at http://www.trademarkbidwatch.com

by informationcentral on Friday 11th of July 2008 at 19:52

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by Seth on Monday 21st of April 2008 at 12:58