Google policy change sparks ‘trade-jacking’ threat
- Added:
- May 12, 2008
Google has made radical changes to its trademark policy that could cost major companies millions as they struggle to protect their brands online.
Google’s revised UK trademark protection policy, which cam einto effect this month, allows non-trademark owners to bid on trademarked terms within its Adwords system.
Now, the only restriction is on including trademarks within the text of the advertisement. The change means that non-trademark owners will be able to place paid search ads in Google’s UK search results pages when users search for trademarked terms and brand names.
Rival sites can now appear in sponsored search results when users query a specific brand or company name. The likely outcome is that many brands will be forced to incur losses on brand name clicks.
The new policy, which mirrors Google’s policy in the US, is tipped to send prices skyrocketing, and could leave the search giant open to legal challenges from the major UK brands likely to lose millions as a result.
Jonathan Robinson, chief operating officer of online brand monitoring specialist NetNames, commented: “In the same way as companies make defensive registration of domain names to ensure that their competitors do not purchase them and divert their traffic, they may now have to do the same for trademark keywords.”
“With the new system, the only partial way that a company can protect against its trademarks being used by third parties is to buy as many ‘shares’ of the relevant keywords. This would result in the price of these keywords rising to such an extent that it would act as an economic deterrent to competitors looking to buy those terms. However, it is only a deterrent. There is no longer any hard and fast way of ensuring that your competitors cannot ‘hi-jack’ your brand credentials and trademarks.”
“The real impact of this change is that companies that have not previously invested in PPC advertising, relying instead on natural search optimisation, will now be put at a considerable disadvantage and may find themselves forced to invest in paid search simply to remain competitive. One thing is clear, this is a move that be viewed as controversial by many and will provoke much debate.”