Google appeals trademark ruling

March 18, 2009
by Duncan Fisher

In May last year Google decided to relax its trademark policy for PPC adverts in the UK by allowing advertisers to add trademarked keywords through its Adwords system. Google argued that this change in policy was in line with their continued goal of improving user experience by offering more choice. This was met with mixed reaction by large institutions & their advertisers across the different sectors, unhappy that allowing affiliates or aggregator type sites to appear has actually done nothing but force up their ad spend due to higher CPCs with increased competition entering the bidding auction model. At Latitude we recommend that advertisers with well established brands take the necessary steps to ensure they deal with these challenges. An effective search strategy is vital, combining a strong presence across both natural rankings and paid search adverts to better dominate the real estate across all the SERPs.