Google's new trademark policy - what do we do now?

With one fell swoop, Google made a massive announcement last week in reference to its trademark policy on Adwords, its PPC advertising platform. The new policy means that advertisers are no longer restricted from bidding on trademark terms. This could mean companies could face a lot of competition for terms they previously had sole control of, such as their company name.

So for instance, I run “123 Limos” and I have been bidding on PPC on this keyphrase for years. My local rival “ABC Limos” hasn’t been allowed to bid on my name, until now. He can now do so and steal traffic that is meant for my site. Sneaky...

Clients and colleagues alike have asked me “Should I bid on my competitors brand name?” My response has generally been that it is the client’s decision as to whether they should look to bid on competitor’s keyphrases to attract more traffic.

I did however offer these points to be considered:

1. Is there a lot of traffic under the keyphrase you are considering bidding on?
If the answer is no, whats the point? Spending time looking for phrases that might bring you the odd gem is not always the best use of time. I’d rather be analysing what you have done, and where you can be making improvements overall.

2. Will it bring relevant traffic?
Not necessarily. If you’re B&Q and you start bidding on Homebase, you may well get the right genre of people to the site. But if they are expecting the Homebase website and get something else, won’t this confuse the user? So it has cost you money to bring them to the site only for them to close the window and go elsewhere.

It’s the same as an ecommerce site bidding on a product that they don’t have in stock – the user ends up disappointed as there is an incongruence between what they have requested, and what they have been displayed.

A client once asked me if he should optimise his site to rank on David Beckham and Kylie Minogue. He repaired washing machines... its the same thing really!

3. Are you prepared to put your competitors name all over your site?
When Google introduced Quality Score a while back, it was an attempt to make all PPC ads as relevant as possible to the content of the web page they were pointing to. So the higher your Quality Score, the higher your ad position and the lower the bid.

With this in mind, in order to achieve a decent ad position and achieve a decent click through rate (CTR), you would need to make sure that you had content on your site that related to your ad. Do B&Q want to put Homebase’s name all over their website...? I think not.

4. Is your natural search in order?
If you have to bid high on PPC to get a position on your company name, it’s usually a sign that your natural search isn’t effective enough. You should rank in the top 3 for your company name irrespective of your competition. If you don’t, you could be spending that PPC ad revenue better elsewhere...

5. Focus on what you are doing right
Rather than trying to steal traffic from the competition, focus on where you have made gains on your online marketing strategy over the last year or so. Where else can you improve what you’re doing? Are there areas you haven’t looked at for a while that should be improved?

6. Can you get better traffic elsewhere?
The answer to this is probably yes. There are many other keyphrases you could be targeting that would bring you better quality, more relevant traffic. And if you think you have exhausted what you have done with PPC, look at other online marketing areas like viral, email and SEO.

There are a lot of comments out there at the moment that are based around “the end of Google” and “the abolishment of trademarking”. Over the last few years, CPC prices have increased without knowledge of this. If you optimise your ads effectively and continue look at improving the overall path a customer takes through your website, you will still see a very good ROI from Google.

It could well affect people using Google as they may not be able to find what they are after, but for savvy advertisers, it could mean further increased effectiveness elsewhere within a PPC campaign. It will force people to become better at ad text writing, and ad building in general, which can only be good for the PPC campaign owner.

My own opinion is that it is the opening of the door for CPA, which Google has been trailing for a while. After all why wouldn’t you want to convert to a medium where you only pay for an action you set? Affiliates have been running this way for years and successfully so.

Sit tight and see what happens, but I wouldn't expect to see the massive fallout that some so called "experts" are predicting. People will still use Google for PPC as long as it continues to be an effective way of searching for content. When that starts dropping, then it could get interesting...