Google Rewards Advertisers Bidding on Competitor Trademark Terms
This may not be a shock to anyone, but I find it very interesting that with all of the Trademark issues and class-action lawsuits going on in the search industry, I find it very difficult to believe that Google, of all engines, is rewarding its advertisers (with Quality Score points) who are bidding on their competitor's key Trademark keywords.
If you take a look at the image (I love Snag-It!) below, you can see that one of my client's is paying $0.08 cents on a competitors branded search term. (Obviously, I am not revealing which companies are involved)
In Conclusion:
So is Google putting a blind eye to this or is this just a "loophole" that has not been fixed yet in the algorithm. I know this sounds a little "uncharacteristic" of ethical Google, but I can honestly say that I have proof that one of my clients is paying less than $0.10 for their competitor's Trademarked keyword. I was a bit surprised not only by the low CPC, but also that the CTR% was under 4%. Furthermore, the other similar branded "head and long tail keywords" had significantly higher CTR% and were paying up to $0.30+ CPC. Is this Google rewarding Quality Score based on Conversion Tracking results? That is another blog post
Now tell me, does this make sense to you? In an non-ethical, algorithm way, I can see this is an opportunity to exploit. But does this make it right? With the increased CPCs these days, Take what you can get!
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c904953ef00e54f9ded308833
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Google Rewards Advertisers Bidding on Competitor Trademark Terms:
Comments