Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Perhaps all is not so well in the US for Google

Suggestions in April that the Google brand bidding switch in the US in 2004 was relatively trouble-free are slightly incorrect - or have at least turned out to be.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting how "tensions over piggybacking have been simmering for a couple of years" and big travel brands such as Marriott, IHG, American Airlines and Northwest Airlines are unhappy at the behaviour of search engines, in particular - surprise-surprise - Google.

Read all our coverage of the issue.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

1 comment:

Toby Kesterton said...

Reading the WSJ article it occurs their might be anoter twist in this story. Take this scenario:

A competitor bids on a trademark name but uses generic ad text and Google's automatic tool for the ad text. Now Google is the one responsibe for showing the trademark name in the ad.

Should Google modify their ad generating tool to not show trademarked names?

If not and a company want generic ads that avoid trademarks would they have to specifically list every trademark as a negative? This would be a difficult burden for a company that wants to play nice.