Competitor using our Name for Adwords Keyword

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cfpa

Joined: Oct 20, 2006

# Posts: 202

Posted: 11/02/2007 06:58 am

Our competitor us using our company name as one of their adwords keywords. Is this legal? And they are constantly trying to outbid us. Yesterday, I just upped it to $0.32 and this morning they are back above us. So now I increased it to $0.52. They wouldn't be doing this unless they got decent hits on it but it seems wrong that we keep having to outbid for our own name. What can I do in this situation?

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Quadrille

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Joined: Nov 15, 2000

# Posts: 785

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Posted: 11/02/2007 07:37 am

Is your name a registered trade mark?

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cfpa

Joined: Oct 20, 2006

# Posts: 202

Posted: 11/02/2007 07:40 am

I believe so. Let me double check with my CFO. But what grounds to we have if we are or are not trademarked? Thanks.

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Quadrille

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Joined: Nov 15, 2000

# Posts: 785

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Posted: 11/02/2007 08:50 am

Check adwords TOS - but a trade mark gives you certain 'rights' and protections, which are recognised by Adwords.

You may need to discuss it with them.

Without TM protection, there's not a lot you can do, so far as I'm aware.

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alewinsk

Joined: Aug 06, 2007

# Posts: 5

Posted: 11/02/2007 09:56 am

Cfpa,

Reading over your circumstance, I fully agree that you should check to see if your brand name is trademarked.

But, there are not rules against a competitor bidding on your branded keywords. Competitors may bid on what ever keywords they wish.

Where trademark protection comes in is with headlines, body copy, and display URL's. If you do have a trademark on your brand, get it to Google. Google will review your trademark and then there is a good chance that they will offer trademark protection upon your brand term.

This means that competitors will not allowed to mention your brand name within their headline, copy, or display URL. This DOES NOT mean that they will stop competitors from bidding upon your brand keywords.

Moving forward there are certain things you can do to try and prevent or stop this from happening:

1)Maximum bids – Typically your brand terms are you best converting terms, if this is true in your case, you should have no problem convincing people that you need to have your Max CPC for your brand terms increased significantly. This should sometimes be set to 10-20 times or even higher from what an average CPC costs, just in case of this type of situation.
2)"Gentleman's Agreement" – I have seen certain circumstances work where companies will contact their competitors and try to come to some "gentleman's agreement" where neither company will bid upon one another's brand terms. These gentleman's agreement can work quite nicely if executed properly.

I hope this helps.

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cfpa

Joined: Oct 20, 2006

# Posts: 202

Posted: 11/02/2007 10:15 am

2)"Gentleman's Agreement" – I have seen certain circumstances work where companies will contact their competitors and try to come to some "gentleman's agreement" where neither company will bid upon one another's brand terms. These gentleman's agreement can work quite nicely if executed properly.

Great idea - unfortunately our competitor is not a gentleman by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, he plays downright dirty. I would not be surprised if he was guilty of click fraud against us as well.

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mj1256

Joined: Jun 05, 2006

# Posts: 663

Posted: 11/02/2007 11:39 am

does anyone remember the search engine wars book. it is not a fair environment. it is business. their are ways to serve keyworks in code from the server that you will never be able to detect. a major retailer i worked for did it all of the time.

some people think that bu using the SE's for marketing they have found a even playing field where the little guy can compete with the big corporations. its just not true

if your looking for fairness and Scruples in business you can find it at .... um... er....ah...your... ohyeah....you know....???

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mj1256

Joined: Jun 05, 2006

# Posts: 663

Posted: 11/02/2007 11:49 am

On one of the apprentice shows the two teams needed to buy bullhorns in NYC. There were only 40 available in the whole city.

Team A made a deal by phone for all of them and agreed to pick them up the next day.

Team B personally went store to store and they came across the store that had put together the order for team A.

well, Team B bought all of team A's bull horns. the store didn't care as a sale is a sale.

Team A lost the test because they didn't get any bullhorns and cried foul becuase of what team B did to them.

not only did Donald Trump commend team B for buying all of team A's bull horns, but when they complained the "Donald" said, "Its Business, team A did the right thing, get over it!"

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cfpa

Joined: Oct 20, 2006

# Posts: 202

Posted: 11/02/2007 11:54 am

I don't like the way Donald Trump does business...he'd fire me on the spot. I believe in ethics and playing fair and maybe that makes me naive.

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cgar23

Joined: Mar 22, 2007

# Posts: 18

Posted: 11/02/2007 02:32 pm

What alewinsk said is right on. We bid way high on our company name to ensure that we are seen. As he said, those people are looking for you specifically so make sure they find you. It should be worth it $$ wise.

Also, it's helpful to put "Official Site" and have your brand name in the ad copy (especially if you've contacted Google so that nobody else can use your brand in their ad copy). Finally, make sure your display URL in your ads is simply your company name or brand name or whatever applies. This should ensure you'll get most of the traffic. There will be some spill out to your competitors but hopefully it shouldn't be significant. You can always run ads on his (competitor's) KWs to cancel that out. ;-)

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flyingrose

Moderator

Joined: Oct 30, 2003

# Posts: 3361

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Posted: 11/06/2007 01:13 pm

It is common for advertisers to bid on competitor's keywords. As long as your buyers can find you I don't see it as a huge issue. It isn't as though your potential buyers aren't ever going to find out you even have competitors.

Good advice from cgar23 regarding helping your ad stand out and indicating yours is the official site.

We wouldn't trade our time and integrity to play Trump's silly game in the first place. The time is fast approaching when the rules of life will change big time. Those of us whose integrity is not for sale at any price are going to displace those who believe there is no need for such a thing as integrity. And believe me, boy are they going to be surprised.

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cfpa

Joined: Oct 20, 2006

# Posts: 202

Posted: 11/07/2007 11:43 am

Thanks cgar23

I added Official Site to my ad and it increased our clicks...just hope it's not click fraud by our competitor. But I did check in Google Analytics and the avg site time is a few minutes for our site name so that makes me think it isn't click fraud.

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flyingrose

Moderator

Joined: Oct 30, 2003

# Posts: 3361

Website

Posted: 11/15/2007 06:29 pm

Making it obvious that it IS your site when someone is specifically searching for you is really important. If you check your conversion rates you will most likely find they are best for your own business and domain names.

I also recommend you check your logs and any site search or other records for similar and/or misspelled variations of your company and domain names and buy those specific keywords and phrases as well.

Many advertisers also buy variations of their competitor's names as well. Those will not convert as well as your own names.

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tb12

Joined: Mar 26, 2007

# Posts: 15

Posted: 02/12/2008 07:10 am

cfpa - did you ever get this figured out? I am going through a similar situation right now and am thinking about approaching our competition. When I search your name (assuming your company is cfpa), I see a few different paid listings come up. Some seem like they are broadmatched and some seem like direct competition. Which was the site you were having trouble with? I would like to see if their actions are congruent with what I am dealing with.

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animated3d

Joined: Dec 22, 2005

# Posts: 310

Posted: 02/12/2008 02:20 pm

maybe instead of bothering what keywords the competition is bidding on and if they are positione above you how about thinking of a better landing page and adwords title that lures the people to your site instead of theirs? most people dont care who is positioned on top on adwords, so as long as you can be seen and have a better title then your competition and they are more likely to click yours.

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tb12

Joined: Mar 26, 2007

# Posts: 15

Posted: 02/13/2008 08:03 am

animated3d - Good point. I was hoping to reach a "gentleman's agreement" as stated above but think that it may be a waste of time. I work in a very niche space and the competition isn't exactly fierce which is why I was hoping to get some anecdotal evidence. I guess I can just ignore it and focus on my own landing pages, text, etc.

Thanks for keeping my head level smile

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tb12

Joined: Mar 26, 2007

# Posts: 15

Posted: 02/13/2008 11:17 am

Actually, this brings up another question: If I am in the B to C space and market mainly seasonally (specifically toys around the holdidays), what can I use in my ppc as far as brand names are concerned? I am assuming I need permission from the manufacturer, but will Google allow it if I send written permission?

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animated3d

Joined: Dec 22, 2005

# Posts: 310

Posted: 02/13/2008 04:08 pm

keywords are keywords and i dont think there is a law against bidding on keywords just use the googles adwords tool to see which keywords are good bidding on for example why would a so called company'buzz cola' come after me when i bid on (buzz cola bottles,buy cheao buzz cola cans and so on...) and if the manufacturer does really come after you then you just stop using the ones they can show u that are trademarked

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leonkris

Joined: Apr 11, 2008

# Posts: 2

Posted: 04/12/2008 12:54 am

I used to work for a company that had the same problem, competitor was using our trademark.

If you want to talk to Google or the search engine, it's advisable that you provide evidence. It's hard to get a hold of their rep, don't let them tell you to comeback with evidence coz you may have to wait for a long time to get that chance again.

Check out ispionage.com, it can help you monitor your kw or trademark, and since it has historical data, you'll have the evidence you need.

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