Can broad searches help circumvent Trademark restrictions?

November 22, 2005

Question
Hello people,

I work for an IT spare parts supplier, and as you can imagine, we’ve come up against one or two trademark issues with Adwords. Especially Dell.

Now, we sell Dell spare parts, however, the word Dell cannot be used in either the Ad Text or the keyword list for the Ad. (We have a brief success with a dynamic ad, but that only lasted 5 days!)

I’d really like to get my ads to show whenever somebody types “dell spare parts”. Is there a way that I can spin a broad search to pick up on the “spare parts” section of the customer’s search phrase and trigger our ad? I have “spare parts” as a keyword but it never seems to show when I type “dell spare parts”.

It seems that the inclusion of the word “dell” somehow excludes any computer spares ads from showing!

Apologies if this issue has been covered elsewhere, but I’d really appreciate some advice on this.

Many thanks,

Damian

Answers

< -> You can add the trademark symbol to the word, this seems to bypass the restriction filter. It’s being done a lot on my main keyword (EXTREMELY competitive). Try finding it in Character Map if you’re in windows.

The only caveat is that it doesn’t bold the word when it’s searched. This could decrease CTR a bit, but it’s probably better than getting no impressions (you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, yadda yadda).

< -> damianscott71, trademark questions are not straightforward to answer since there are so many variables, such as what trademark, in what countries the trademark owner has rights, exactly what rights they have, to what countries you intend to advertise, and so forth.

For this reason it’s best to simply ask AdWords support, as they have the information at hand to help you navigate your particular situation. You may even discover that it is just fine to use the trademarked term in your keyword list.

On this basic subject (and just as a general comment not directed to this query), I should probably add that if an advertiser continually tries to work around the trademark policy - particularly if they’re disapproved for it again and again - it can end up not being a good thing.

AdWordsAdvisor

< -> AdWordsAdvisor - Is what BriGuy20 said true? Can you add a trademark symbol next to the word to make it ok? Or would this be considered trying to work around the policy?

Thanks

< ->venrooy, thanks for asking. The short story is that using the trademark symbol is not acceptable (meaning that it doesn’t serve to cancel out the trademark owners instructions), and such ads will still get disapproved.

If such ads are disapproved again and again and re-submitted each time with the TM symbol then, yes, that would be considered as an attempt to circumvent the policy.

AWA

Author: damianscott71
Source: WebmasterWorld.com