Should We Be Worried About Google’s New TM Policy? April 8th, 2008 9:04 am

I’ve been thinking about the new Google Trademark Trigger policy and how it will effect us! ‘Loquax’ is our trademark and as such we have used the option on Google to prevent bidding on our mark. This is now about to end!

On one hand the policy change is of huge concern and annoyance. We’ve invested time and money in establishing our identity, albeit as a small company, and thanks to this new policy searches on our specific trademark may yield competitor ads come May 5th. Will we lose traffic? Should we bid on competitors brands? Will we need to take legal action? Is a trademark trigger trademark infringement? Can we tell a competitor to not use our mark?

The legal side of things is going to be a minefield to sort out, and I do wonder whether trademark trigger bidding won’t be as widespread initially as companies figure out the legalities. If in the near future a legal precedent is set whereby trademark trigger bidding is seen as infringement then few companies would risk treading on trademark toes. Perhaps even more so if any infringement proceedings could be brought about in retrospect!

So what about losing traffic?

Until everything is let loose on May 5th we can only speculate, but in the interest of science I asked our users a simple question regarding search. The question was:

You’re searching google for something specific - let’s assume something easy like ‘Amazon’ because you want to go there and buy a book. Now if when you enter the word ‘Amazon’ - and you saw sponsored links to other bookshops on the RHS - what would you do?

With over 100 responses the result was as follows:

Now admittedly in terms of real market research there’s a lack of depth to the poll but it serves a quick and easy purpose. Put simply if a user is searching for a ‘website brand’ they want to go to that ‘website brand’ and few, if any, would be distracted by the sponsored ads! Of course there’s an increase in the potential to lose traffic, but in a grasping at straws conclusion trademark trigger bidding shouldn’t have that much effect on traffic (well providing it’s only the respondents to this poll searching for you!)

Comments left by my users also made interesting reading. Some suggested they don’t even see the sponsored ads, and that made me wonder whether this could turn out to be a bit of an own goal by Google.

If Google are now going to plaster adwords on every search result could this lead to users being drawn more to the white space organic results over the sponsored results? Could this new approach in fact damage PPC on generic terms too as users become ‘adword blind’?

Another point worth noting is that search engines already lump competitors together to aid their users. Take MSN for example and do a search for popular experience and gift site Buyagift. On the right hand side of the page you’re offered related searches. Ok, they’re not paid for, but the user is offered the choice to search for Red Letter Days!

Do a search for Loquax on MSN and you bizarrely get Gretna Football Club as a related search! Regardless of the relevancy could that be seen as equally as valid or invalid as a trademark trigger? Essentially what I’m saying is that perhaps Google are not doing anything that new and it’s only because it’s (1) paid for by potential competitors and (2) traffic from Google is often massive compared to other search engines that there are more concerns?

So am I still worried?

Of course! Google have suggested (or at least said in order to justify their policy change) that a “good proportion of users in the US and Canada have been clicking on competitor ads” (Revenue Addict).

However, it will be interesting to see whether traffic changes mirror the results of the cheap and cheerful poll. In a huge leap of speculation and with straws held firmly in hand - searchers may well be becoming blind to adwords and if they want something specific (e.g. brand name website) then that’s where they wish to go and that’s where they will go!

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