Google goes Potty over Trademarks

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October 2nd, 2007 by Nick

Sometimes you have to question the ethics behind Google and their regulations they have in place. Don't get me wrong, Google is a phenomenal search engine and the result it's algorithm produce are generally very good, better than other engines, however from a PPC perspective some things drive me and my clients up the wall!

Trademarks! What is the point of having a trademark if Google don’t take note of it. Google say that you have to have it registered with themselves as a ‘Google trademark’ in order for them to monitor the use of it. However, surely if your business is going to go through the laborious motions of getting a registered trademark, Google should actively make sure that these trademarks are not infringed? Not the case.

According to recent sources, American Airlines are taking Google Inc to court over this issue and filed a lawsuit on Thursday 16th August 2007 in the District Court of Fort Worth, US. American Airlines trademarked the term Aadvantage, the name of its frequent flier programme; however other advertisers are also allowed to advertise for this very keyword.

Botox is another example – as a registered trademark and a registered Google trademark, there are very few advertisers who have authority to use this as a keyword. It’s bizarre, but true.

Both case are very different. American Airlines have trademarked a term which is very much key to their business. Someone searching for Aadvantage is 95% likely to be looking for the frequent flyer programme by American Airlines. So why, in the US, should 3 other advertisers be allowed to come out for a search term which is a registered trademark. Surely this is illegal? I don’t know the definitive answer to this as I am not involved in the legal side, however it will be of high interest to watch the progress of this case. What I will say is that none of other advertisers actually use the ‘Aadvantage’ as a term in their advert texts or title which leads me to believe that Google will win the case. At the end of the day, Google is about returning quality search results, with more adverts appearing for this search term the end user is offered more choice and variation for their search. Google deems this as fair and increases the search experience. I agree with this opinion and stance, however does this not make a trademark worthless?

Botox is an example where the trademarking has been carried out fully as Google request it to be. However, the only downside to this is there are now very fewer advertisers under the search term ‘Botox’ in the UK than there were before. This limits the choice for the end user, so how are trademarks of benefit in this instance? Not only this but the Google trademark has limited the amount of revenue that Google makes from CPCs for Botox related searches! How is this in the search giant’s interest?

We have a high spending client advertising on Google. Their close competitor advertises under our client’s company name. It isn’t a registered trademark but the company name actually comes out in the title of the advert. This has recently been deemed as unethical advertising on the competitor’s behalf and was informed by Google to remove the ad. The reason being that, although it isn’t a registered trademark, Google want to provide quality and relevant search results: the sponsored link was not deemed to be such. Therefore Google do make correct decisions at times.

These are three classic examples and could be debated on all day. The best thing that can be done from agency point of view where our advertisers are key to the business is to understand the regulations in depth in order to provide the best solution to work around the problem.

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