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I am always leveraging a company’s PPC brand (and yes, 1+1=3 when it comes to having organic and PPC presence for brand-related searches) there are roadblocks brought on by PPC networks. In the past few months we’ve been dealing with an interloper who has used broad-match on Google Adwords to get around their trademark blocking policy… Note, none of these links are to the interloper in question, I’m just linking to informative posts related to it)
According to Google’s documentation, Google Adwords will not allow competitors to actually use the trademarked keyword phrases in the text of its ads – but does not prohibit purchasing the keyword itself and presenting an ad. This seems to work most of the time, as illustrated by Shoemoney (where it kinda worked.)

For example, I do marketing for a national franchise, let’s call it “Cheeseworks” (fictional) - and I have a high quality score placement on PPC and organic rank. But competitors are able to bid AND DISPLAY “Cheesework Pizza” on Google Adwords (singular, no ’s’.)

Cheeseworks Pizza
Open a Franchise in Your Town
Excellent Opportunity - Low Cost
http://www.fabuliospizza.com

And then somebody else runs this one:

Cheesework Pizza
Are You Ready to Be Your
Own Boss? Learn More!
http://www.franchise-pizza-leads.com

(this company sells leads to franchises - again this is a fictional representation of a real case)

Yes, we filed trademark complaint about them using the singular version of this mark, but since they do character-by-character checks (apparently) - and rejected the complaint. If someone does broad-match triggering on “Cheeseworks Pizza” the ad with the singular version will show. This is wrong. Trademark/Brands are protected from confusingly similar derivatives. I don’t expect Google to become an arbiter of trademarks - they need a scalable system that does much of this - but this case (it is a real case, just as absurd) they should consider the spirit of trademark law considering “use in commerce” and how their match types work.

The interloper had private domain registration and doesn’t answer emails - we couldn’t prove it but there was evidence they were selling leads to others. We had to spend a lot of effort with attorneys to send a C&D and a real substantial threat. The ad is off now, but it required huge work. We’d not expect them to get involved in the McDowell’s vs. McDonald’s case that was in the Coming to America movie. But this was simply a singular versus plural issue that anyone could see was illegal.

Upon removal of the ad (via our legal work) our brand-specific click through rate jumped 4%. This, over the course of several months, adds up to over $6000 in traffic not to mention possible loss of business to a competitor. There is real talk about suing the other advertiser for the harm done. I know Google wants things to be handled “outside” but this is one case where it shouldn’t be.

At the very least Google needs to block by match type when infringement occurs. They should have disallowed broad match at least.

Note: I’m not an attorney - none of this is legal advice. If someone would like to chime in and clarify these issues I will be happy to hear it.

postscript:  I received an email from Google who has approved the singular version of the trademark block.  It took me three tries, and lots of damage done to my client, but at least it’s gone now.  I want to be grateful but still I’m just mad.  

Image from “Coming to America” a terrific Paramount Pictures film. Highly recommended.

Former Technorati CEO David Sifry has launched Web Hot or Not?, a Hot or Not site for websites.

It’s fun-cool, and has been done before, but it spooks me out in the world of multivariate testing and conversions optimization.

What’s hot:

Studies have shown that sites get only 50 milliseconds to give an impression to users. This site may help us learn what sites are attractive and appealing in a new way. The trouble is our assessment of any site is based on the context of that site, and how it was found. Personalized search results further refine these buckets of intent so the site is more likely to be found by certain people.

What’s not:

Anyone involved in web marketing knows that only through testing can we achieve the beauty of conversions and success for the site owner. To skim over websites and vote entirely on how they appear free from any other information (e.g. the search, PPC or organic, inbound link, intended audience, etc.) is to miss the point. It’s true, often “ugly” landing pages outconvert snazzy flash-based slot machines 3:1. Why encourage sites that look pretty but may not perform or worse, distract business owners from testable designs? I hate to see ego-designers who spend entire web budgets on snazz before knowing if the approach is right.

In my mailbox today

Re: [url]

To whom it may concern:
We’d appreciate your forwarding this to the appropriate contact at [url]

….. we have noticed that you have blocked the Ask.com agent from crawling your site in the robots.txt file.

We definitely understand that granting our crawler access to your site is an act of trust, which we will use with utmost integrity. So we are asking you to reconsider allowing our crawler access to your site. If there is some reason you are blocking us, please share that with us and allow us to address it. Or if there is no reason, then we ask you to go ahead and remove the line in your robots.txt file that is blocking us. Our goal is to have the same access you have granted other search engines.

The line in question is:

User-agent: Jeeves
Disallow: /

Nice!

BUT…. long ago, Jeeves was used by Leon Brocard to create a web mirroring bot.

Therefore “Jeeves” used to be listed as

robot-id: jeeves
robot-name: Jeeves
robot-cover-url: http://www-students.doc.ic.ac.uk/~lglb/Jeeves/
robot-details-url:
robot-owner-name: Leon Brocard
robot-owner-url: http://www-students.doc.ic.ac.uk/~lglb/
robot-owner-email: lglb@doc.ic.ac.uk
robot-status: development
robot-purpose: indexing maintenance statistics
robot-type: standalone
robot-platform: UNIX
robot-availability: none
robot-exclusion: no
robot-exclusion-useragent: jeeves
robot-noindex: no
robot-host: *.doc.ic.ac.uk
robot-from: yes
robot-useragent: Jeeves v0.05alpha (PERL, LWP, lglb@doc.ic.ac.uk)
robot-language: perl5
robot-description: Jeeves is basically a web-mirroring robot built as a
final-year degree project. It will have many nice features and is
already web-friendly. Still in development.
robot-history: Still short (0.05alpha)
robot-environment: research

modified-by: Leon Brocard

I don’t know why the bot was on the “evil list” but it explains why this old site had it blocked.

I had always had my eye open for

Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves/Teoma
DirectHit

…but never just “Jeeves” - but it is definitely an alias.

I thought it was awesome for Ask.com to take the time to crawl these files and send out notes.

In a shortly to be released study by B2B, web marketers, web developers, videographers and supporting technologists may want to consider preparing for a busy 2008. Some hilights:

60.1% of all marketers plan to increase their 2008 budgets.
79.1% plan to increase their online budgets (last year was 75.6%)
Web Site Development will be increased says 74.0% of marketers.
Email Marketing will increase says 70.1%
Search Engine Marketing (SEO) will be increased by 64.3%
Other increases include video (39.5%), web casting (39.1%) and social media (26.2%)

source

I also think that 2008 will be a huge year for analytics, and for those who know how to utilize them. Skilled, science-based marketing seems to me like the smartest and lowest risk type of investment for people still bedazzled by Web 2.0 orgies. I’m hoping that 2008 will turn focus back to the business, in particular the small business, which was relatively neglected in terms of innovation for 2007.

It appears that the Microsoft Content Ads are now generally available to everyone.

For Advertisers
Unlike search ads that are triggered by keywords a potential customer enters, content ads are triggered by certain words in articles or Web content. If you are bidding on those words, your ad might be displayed somewhere on the page.

And for Publishers
If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft’s publisher program, just complete their form to keep informed about new developments, invitations to participate in focus groups or feedback sessions.

First introduced in August to beta testers, the content network gives people more reach on the MSN family of networks.

To learn more, check out:

• Content Ads product info
• Content Ads FAQ
• Content Ads webinar

Please SPHINN this story

In the spirit of the Google Adwords Individual and Yahoo Search Ambassador, Microsoft has started handing out invitations to join the AdExcellence accreditation program.

“Upon passing the exam, you’ll become a Microsoft adExcellence Member. As a Member, you’ll receive permission to exhibit the official adExcellence logo on your website and be included in our adExcellence Membership Directory. “

“Designed especially for our advertisers, the Microsoft adExcellence program is our official accreditation program that gives advertisers the opportunity to become a Microsoft adCenter expert. The program offers both free training materials and a fee-based examination, thus providing our adCenter advertisers the ability to gain valuable adCenter knowledge and demonstrate their expertise. Over time, this program will evolve to include additional training materials and benefits for our accredited Microsoft adExcellence Members.”

I’ll be going through the exam shortly. Should be fun!