Working for a merchant and having to monitor what was considered trademark infringement (including trademark text in PPC ads) on a daily basis was a whack-a-mole, never ending saga. Now as an affiliate, primarily working in PPC, I feel the need to promote a sense of trust in existing and new relationships with merchants. Merchant CEO’s must have some reservations and/or terror of paying double for the same traffic after learning about this new rule, right?

Google’s search partner network is already diluted with poor results pages and they certainly don’t monitor ‘quality’ as they promise to do.

Will the revenue stream from this policy really fight off an army of lawyers?

So for example, the trademark term “TurboTax” (which Intuit has registered with Google) cannot be used in ad text by H&R Block because they only sell TaxCut and their landing pages would not be within Google’s requirements.

I think it’s a good change, but it won’t have a big impact overall. Many advertisers (both resellers and affliates) were using other methods to get around the restrictions anyway. Take a look at the ads at http://www.google.com/search?a.....ga+watches … you’ll see spacing tricks, special characters, trademark in display URL, pluralization, etc.

Google will definitely get an injection of extra Adwords cash that likely will be enough to deflect lawsuits and report better earnings.

Gleb

I appreciate your comment.

So Keane was incorrect? Where exactly does the policy say that businesses are not allowed to use TM’s of the competitors? Is it the clause that says that “the advertiser may not sell or facilitate the sale of the goods or services of a competitor of the trademark owner”?

One thing to note – the rules have not changed for competitors. Competitors are still not allowed to utilize trademarks in their ad copy and Google will remove those ads if requested.