Google Revises Trademark Trigger Policy

[Tel]

What an interesting return from a Bank Holiday this will be for merchants and agencies as well as affiliates.

Some SEO brand terms will see brand traffic disappear and those who have concentrated on this SEO strategy for the last few years better get those brand terms and derivatives sorted out quick sticks!

And closed brand bidding groups will once again have a large part to play in your search engine strategy and affiliate strategy - depending on the strength of your brand I suppose!

A move in the right direction for affiliate marketing? All of a sudden the value of the industry has risen, significantly. Surely?

Nothing like a bit of excitement on a Friday afternoon.

[Graham@Buyagift]

Originally Posted by nim-b Don't care about being able to advertise on competitor's terms: we don't do this anyway!

Hi Naomi, I wasn't suggesting you I, you or others do actually do this, but as we all know it does go on.

Graham

[Shane]

Originally Posted by Tel closed brand bidding groups will once again have a large part to play in your search engine strategy and affiliate strategy

yup will be some large bottles of champagne being glugged down this weekend methinks.. once again the very few, many doing usually the least of all will probably end up benefiting the most !

[nim-b]

Originally Posted by Graham@Buyagift Hi I wasn't suggesting you I, you or others do actually do this, but as we all know it does go on.

I know you weren't, I was trying to indicate that there's no good side to this from my point of view

[morleymouse]

personal opinion is that its a purely greedy move by google

to put a different spin on it, is there anything to stop a company having 10 adwords accounts?

Im sure we can russle up 10 different domains, landing pages with offers and then use the brand term and google p1 of results as an offers board?

Eg. you search on alpharooms and all the paid slots promote a different destination

Firebox and you get the firebox top 10 gadgets etc

Being TM holders you can use the trademark in the ad so the ad score would beat anyone trying to compete

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Going back to SEO or Organic Results. if it's text in the source code of a page (whether it be main body of text or meta tags) & that page is permitted to be indexable by a search engine then it's still could be perceived as deliberate.

Another difference is that the brand doesn't have to appear in a sponsored ad for that ad to be triggered, whilst for an indexed page in organic search it does. Thus one is displaying the brand, the other isn't, so which is more right or wrong than the other.

With broadmatching on synonyms (even for brand) as we currently have & the possible pending automatic matching, we are all at the mercy of the algo.

Now if you want to get a list of possible synonyms matching your brand try Google's keyword tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Now we have had generic keywords we were using appearing when users type in a brand & vice versa, by using the synonym aspect of this tool we are noticing correlations. These correlations intermittently happen on Google, but seems more so with their main search partners.

[figleaf]

Have just read Jason's blog

Google UK Gives Trademark Triggers The Bullet | One Little Duck - Affiliate Blog

And have a thought. He says 'under these new terms it must be ok for competitors and affiliates to bid on the trademark?'

I don't agree with this fully. I can still have it under the terms of my programme that affiliates cannot bid on trademark term and that is a rule they must abide to, whehter or not google will allow them to. What I can't prevent is say an affiliate for Ann Summers bidding on fig trademark name. Does everyone else have the same understanding?

PS I'm not discussing the virtues of allowing affiliates to bid on your trademark under your scheme, just the principle.

[Tel]

Yes, it is your programme.

But, considering the percentage of traffic that clicks on spots 2,3 and 4 etc - wouldn't you rather use affiliates and pay them a commission to keep the sale?

[loquax]

What I can't prevent is say an affiliate for Ann Summers bidding on fig trademark name. Does everyone else have the same understanding?

... erm, that's what I was suggesting

(I've now editted the text to be clearer)

Jason

[loquax]

But, considering the percentage of traffic that clicks on spots 2,3 and 4 etc

And what's the betting that Google at some point will turn round and say "hold up, results for Figleaves shouldn't be just Figleaves affiliates... lets say only one search result for them and the rest must be a.n.other's"

That would fit with their policy of quality control and providing the searcher with options and better choice.

Jason

[figleaf]

Yeah, sorry Jason, just wanted to clarify.

Tel - like I said, I wasn't saying one was right or the other, just talking of the principle.

It's certainly something we are going to have to review in light of this.

[Tel]

a cert...

Landing pages may have to have multiple listings and advertisers on them to get round this.

Therefore comparison sites (for e.g.) do very well if they have multiple listings as they will be relevant across multiple brand terms and maybe a high quality score and low ppc costs = bigger margin (for generic investment of course.)

What else will fall out of this? Significantly lower ppc affiliate commissions, lower network override for brand terms, bigger generic coverage, problems for SEO companies, fierce brand competition, Yahoo! and MSN follow...and more.

Ooh, the possibilities for affiliates...

[loquax]

Just out of interest... if a user is searching for "Brand Name" - how likely are they to be influenced by adwords appearing?

I can understand that if someone wanted "cheap undies" then having lots of options might be good - but specifically searching for "figleaves" would they then be influenced enough to think "ooh Fred & Brenda's Big Pants Shop I'll try that instead"?

Also, perhaps there's an angle for brands to use... "we're so good, even our competitors desperately want to be us"...

Lots of fun and games to come I reckon!

Jason

[morleymouse]

Originally Posted by Tel Landing pages may have to have multiple listings and advertisers on them to get round this.

as yet not stipulated. I cant see google going as far as saying how many links a site must link to for it to appear on a term. it would also be a nightmare for them to police.

Originally Posted by Tel Therefore comparison sites (for e.g.) do very well if they have multiple listings as they will be relevant across multiple brand terms and maybe a high quality score and low ppc costs = bigger margin (for generic investment of course.)

The last site anyone wants on brand is a comparison site. There are very few sites that are the cheapest for every single product they sell, if someone does a brand search they're coming to you, last thing you need is a site potnetially highlighting a cheaper company.

Originally Posted by Tel Significantly lower ppc affiliate commissions,

why? google have changed some rules so can i slip our basic from 7 to 6% for those driving ppc traffic via temr such as magalluf hotels?

Originally Posted by Tel bigger generic coverage

again im not sure why?

Originally Posted by Tel problems for SEO companies

...

Originally Posted by Tel fierce brand competition, Yahoo! and MSN follow...and more.

This is what google wants. They want everyone bidding all over each other, pushing costs up. Before we had a trademark protected with google we just contacted competators and made agreements. We cleared our own ad space by agreeing that if they dont bid on us we wont bid on them.

[TravelSite]

I'm confused.

Does this mean its legal for companies/people to bid on trademarked terms...

...or that its illegal but it's the adwords advertisers who'd get sued, not Google?!