I saw a post this weekend from some moron saying that the McCain campaign is unethical because it buys Barack Obama's name. Then I read some of comments and for the most part they are accurate save for one person who thought a competitor shouldn't be allowed to buy a brand name. For you search morons out there allow me to explain under the Google rules....
- Google won't allow you to buy a trademarked name
- If you somehow sneak through when you turn on your competitor name buy you will eventually get caught and have it shut off.
- Political names (or personal names) are not trademarked. Sure the occasional name is trademarked but I have yet to find a politician's name trademarked.
- If you are able to buy a competitor's name you won't be stealing traffic and it is never a "no no".
- Simply stated you buy search terms because you are trying to find someone looking for information. So if someone is searching for say "Derek Jeter" they are obviously looking for information on baseball, Yankees, shortstops, and of course Jeter. If you have a competitor product why wouldn't you want to put a message in front of that person?
- Buying a competitor's name in search is the equivalent of lining Coke and Pepsi up in the soda aisle. You know the person is shopping for soda so why not put your message there?
Buying a competitor's name is good business practice when you are allowed to do it. It fine tunes the traffic and intercepts someone with a relevant message. You are not stealing traffic and it certainly isn't unethical. Grow up.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
Eric Frenchman founded PardonMyFrench in 2005. PardonMyFrench is a small boutique digital agency that helps clients of all sizes and in all industries. Whether you are a small local business trying to drive store traffic or a large business, PardonMyFrench can deliver results for you – regardless of spend. We specialize in Google, Facebook, Twitter, Bing, as well as taking the time to explain and work closely with our clients.
A few misconceptions as to what Google's policies are on TMed terms, Eric.
1) You can buy trademarked terms in North America. The UK/Europe have different rules more in line with what you're referring to.
2) The restriction is on using competitors' TMs in adcopy. E.g. Coke ads mentioning 'Pepsi'.
3) "If you somehow sneak through when you turn on your competitor name buy you will eventually get caught and have it shut off." It's possible, but quite unlikely imho. First, because ads make the search engines money. Second because short of a complaint/PR issue, there's no incentive to take action.
On a related note, I'd love to chat with you more about political search marketing, and give you/the McCain campaign some data I have from ads I bought during the Feb' Super Tuesday primaries. You might also find interest in this post I did analyzing the last Quebec provincial election and their shabby search marketing: http://cityseo.blogspot.com/2007/03/political-campaigns-marketings-slacker.html
Posted by: Gab Goldenberg | August 20, 2008 at 12:28 PM
Gab,
Thanks for your comments. I wasn't aware of the differences between the US and elsewhere. Regarding #3, my experience is that you get caught because I've personally had that happen :-)
Posted by: PardonMyFrench | August 20, 2008 at 03:54 PM
My pleasure Eric. Actually, I just learned about those recently through a thread on the SEM 2.0 Google Group. It's got a high signal-to-noise ratio I think you'd enjoy :).
BTW, you interested in the campaign data? I racked up about 50,000 impressions in hardly any time. Would really love to help out the McCain campaign by sharing that :) .
Posted by: Gab Goldenberg | August 21, 2008 at 11:22 PM