Google’s Adwords Changes
You may have missed a small announcement by Google last week about an Adwords policy change. It only caught my eye because Chris Morley of onlinemarketexperts.com did a post about it. It all started back in 2005.
PPC 2005 style.
Not a lot has changed in Google Adwords since 2005. Sure there’s been a lot of rule changes, interface tweaks and we now have things like “Quality score” and the Adwords Editor but Adwords is fundamentally the same as it was back then. For you kids reading this, this was a strange time before the smart phone, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube & Google video had only really just started.
Telstra, the owner of a classifieds site was running Google ads using the brand names of car dealerships. In 2007 Our ACCC decided this was false & deceptive conduct and decided to take Google & Telstra to court. I said at the time time this was a bad idea and now nearly 6 years later the Australian High Court has also said this was dumb (I’m paraphrasing). This finding came down in early February.
Trademarks in Adwords
For years now, Google has automatically banned users ability to bid on known trademarks and certainly not allowed them to be used in Ad copy unless you had special permission. Last week all that changed with an Adwords Policy Update. Google has said it has brought into line it Adwords policy for China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Brazil with the rest of the world and will now allow bidding on trademark keywords.
Big change for Google.
This may not seem like much of change but it represents potentially a lot more revenue for Google and a big change in the markets mentioned above. If you have a trademark but don’t have a related adwords campaign for it maybe now is a good time to start. Watch the video above to see what I mean. What do you think? Just a way for Google to make heaps more cash or simply bringing their policy into line with the rest of the world? Are you buying trademarked keywords yet? How is it going for you?
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
