Few things are as frustrating for our clients as searching for their name and seeing a competitor buying search placement for their trademark. Yahoo has finally seen the ethical light and put an end to it on their engine.

Here is the email Yahoo Search Engine Marketing sent out to their clients:

On March 1, 2006, Yahoo! Search Marketing will modify its editorial guidelines regarding the use of keywords containing trademarks. Previously, we allowed competitive advertising by allowing advertisers to bid on third-party trademarks if those advertisers offered detailed comparative information about the trademark owner’s products or services in comparison to the competitive products and services that were offered or promoted on the advertiser’s site.

In order to more easily deliver quality user experiences when users search on terms that are trademarks, Yahoo! Search Marketing has determined that we will no longer allow bidding on keywords containing competitor trademarks.

There is no doubt that this has always been somewhat of an unethical tactic by some search marketers. A loophole, pseudo trademark infringement at best. Until now the recourse has been to have our legal department write a letter on behalf of the client, demanding that the competitor stop the tactic or face potential litigation over trademark infringement. Most companies realize the potential cost of such litigation and remove their listing for the trademark.

By making this move, it’s clear that Yahoo hopes to ease tensions for big dollar marketers using large Madison Ave. agencies. A recent story about how Mazda torpedoed Pontiac’s Google campaign by successfully bidding on the term “Pontiac” surely made advertisers weary of paid search marketing.

This move is inline with the remarks made by Yahoo CEO, Terry Semel when he promised to increase paid search relevancy. It’s a good move for them, and it makes all of our lives a little easier.

yahoo, search engine marketing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 10:47 amand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.