Google Adwords Trial Going Ahead
http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/2007/05/07/daily52.html
The ramifications of this case are far-reaching for Google and paid-search. Can you bid on trademarked terms? Can we use another party's brand to increase traffic/revenue on our own brand? These are the innocent salad days of paid-search. There has to be some clear delineation between fair use and trademark infringement. Cases like this one aim to define the line.
Domain registrants can't register americanblind.com mistypes to point traffic to a levelor.com affiliate programs. I can't take a New York Times ad for Google brand Search pointing visitors to Yahoo. Where is the line in the Adwords world?
I guess we'll find out.
Frank--you or anyone else have any figures/percentages (or ideas/estimates) on how big a part TM adwords represent for Google's paid search?
***FS*** Well, the list of top 100,000 search terms published by services such as worldtracker.com (which mirror google's results) is repleat with trademark intent strings and porn.. Advertisers bid on these top 100,000 search strings and many others because that is what the search-engine's users are looking for.. that's where the traffic volume is. So it is significant.. 30%+ if you include porn? Feel free to chime in with different opinions folks.
Posted by: Steve M. | May 12, 2007 at 12:03 PM
Thanks, Frank.
Wonder how "no TM bidding" (if still the case) Yahoo's numbers compare...
Boy; if TM's are even 15% of G's top search terms (with I assume some of the highest CPCs); and given that 95%+ of their income is from PPC; losing them would be some hit.
Posted by: Steve M. | May 12, 2007 at 03:03 PM
Apparently this case has been lurching along for over 3 years now. There is a decent synopsis from an IP law professor at Santa Clara University here: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2007/04/google_gets_mix.htm
The basic gist is that there are so many differing rulings in various circuit courts that this won't be sorted any time soon.
Posted by: Jamie | May 12, 2007 at 08:37 PM
"Well, the list of top 100,000 search terms published by services such as wordtracker.com (which mirror google's results)"
Hmmm:
worldtracker.com: The Leading News Site on the Net
Maybe you meant "wordtracker.com" ?
***FS*** Yup.. sorry typo. Thanks for correcting
Posted by: TMfor | May 13, 2007 at 02:42 AM