Recommendations Regarding Google Trademark Policy Change

Google have recently made the following announcement regarding changes to their Trademark complaint procedure.

“From May 5, 2008, our trademark complaint investigations will no longer result in Google monitoring or restricting keywords for ads served to users in the UK and Ireland. This will bring our procedure in line with the approach taken in the US and Canada. Complaints received on or after today will be processed under our revised procedure.”

To learn more about this trademark policy revision, please visit http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=92877&hl=en_US.
Why have Google made this change?

Google say they are making this change so that advertisers are able to use keywords that are most relevant to their business and to give users the opportunity to determine which ads they find most relevant.

This will also allow Google to boost revenue by forcing brand owners to compete for their trademark term, but on the other hand it makes sense that Suppliers of branded goods should be allowed to bid on the trademark term as they are legitimately trying to sell these products.

What does this mean in terms of Google Adwords Adverts?

• Competitors still cannot create adverts that directly include trademark terms
• Competitors can now bid on trademark terms to trigger their adverts
• These trademarked terms can be dynamically included in the advert text

Our guidance to clients is as follows.

• If you are not currently already bidding on your trademark term, initially do nothing, especially if you are already at number one organically for your trademark term. If organic sales from your trademark term show a decline or if you lose ranking position, then bid on the brand. We do not recommend adopting a panic approach.

• If you are already bidding on your trademark term, then you should closely monitor the results when the trademark rules are changed and make sure that your ad stands out as being more authoritative than others.

• So how can you convey the message that you are the trademark owner in your ads? The use of the words “official site” in your Ad Text is one approach, but it takes up valuable space if you want to say more about the product. Another approach is to use the symbol ® within the text, this says a lot!

• If you do need to bid on your brand, then as long as you are bidding a comparable price to your competitors, you should expect your ad to appear at the top of the list, given Google’s policy for Ad positioning, Ad Rank = CPC bid x Quality Score.

• Monitor changes to average costs per click (CPC) and resulting positions on your trademark terms. If you see any changes to CPC or the return on investment (ROI) of your trademark terms you may need to adjust your maximum CPC accordingly.

• If you actively sell products that are trademarked terms, it is now legitimate to bid on these terms to attract visitors and sales, and we would recommend doing so. Therefore if, for example, you sell Nike trainers, you can now advertise these products by bidding on the term Nike.

• We do not recommend that you bid on your competitor brand names, as this will cause issues and most likely lead to a bidding war. For example, if you are an Audi car dealership you should not bid on BMW terms.

• We do recommend monitoring for unauthorised bidding on your own brand name and taking the issue up with the competitor concerned if this arises.

• Make sure that you have a clearly defined affiliate policy. You don’t want to compete with your affiliates for your trademark term and pay commission on sales as well, so make sure that your agreement clearly defines what trademark terms they are authorised to use.