Search Marketing Strategies

Google’s Trademark Policy

I’ve noticed a lot of confusion over Google’s new trademark policy.   To refresh everyone, Google changed their trademark policy in May to allow advertisers to have trademarks in their ads even if they are not the trademark owner. http://www.searchmarketing.com/searchmarketing/2009/05/google-trademark-policy-update.html

There is a bit of confusion on how Google is handling the approval process and some new ad status messaging. Google’s approval process for ads to run on the trademark is done separately. Google first lets the ad get approved to run for all other policies, and then they check the use of the trademark and how the ad aligns with their new policy.  The process might take a bit longer and you might see the new message “approved-limited.”  This does not mean that the ad won’t run in certain instances, it merely indicates that the ad contains a trademark term, and that the advertiser wasn’t given explicit permission from the trademark owner. Google will check any ads with the message “approved-limited” continually to make sure it aligns with their new policy. They will do the same for all keyword level URLs as well.

You can check yourself if a landing page doesn’t pass Google’s trademark flag by checking on the approval status of an ad from within the updated UI.  If the ad is approved but the keyword is getting zero impressions you might have a trademark problem. 

Written by Erin Gordon (erin.gordon@channeladvisor.com)

Yahoo to Spend Over $100m on Ad Campaign

In an effort to help promote it's Brand (and drive more users and longer time on site), Yahoo is launching a new campaign to begin "realigning all aspects of it's business around simplifying and enhancing the Web experience," according to their official Press Release. 

This campaign includes a full scale Advertising assault over the coming 15 months where they are planning on spending upwards of $100 million combined with a slew of Product Enhancements they have recently made to their portal.

Here are the Product Enhancements they highlight in the PR:

• Yahoo!’s homepage allows people to access their favorite content and sites on any screen from a single Web location.
• Yahoo! Mail now offers simpler photo sharing, editing and easy access to helpful and productive apps.
• Yahoo! Search has been updated today to make Web search results more relevant and meaningful.
• High-quality video calling has been added to Yahoo! Messenger for instant connections with friends and family.
• Yahoo!’s new mobile homepage enables people to continue their Internet experience on their mobile browser. Additionally, new mobile apps including the recently launched Yahoo! for mobile, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Fantasy Football, Yahoo! Messenger and Flickr, bring best of Yahoo! experiences to mobile devices.

I wouldn't count on this driving any material traffic increases in your Search campaign, but it looks like they are not ready to relinquish the #2 spot to Bing quite yet!

Written by Andrew Belsky (andrew.belsky at channeladvisor.com)

Come see us at shop.org

Searchmarketing readers - ChannelAdvisor will be out at shop.org with a full team of experts ready to show you any aspects of our ChannelAdvisor Complete system (Search, CSE, Marketplaces, Rich Media, etc.) that you are interested in.  In addition to our booth (#401), we'll have a dedicated demo room where you can have a drink+snack and see a longer demo if interested.  Stop by the booth and say you read about it on searchmarketing.com for a little gift.

Retail search marketers - be prepared for a flood of eBay traffic.

Over on sister-blog, eBay strategies, we have details of data that leads us believe that eBay is switching from Yahoo! to Google for their sponsored listing program.

You could see some turbulence in conversion rates, stay tuned.

Bing cashback webinar tomorrow - ChannelAdvisor + Bing / Microsoft

Tomorrow, September 15 @ 2pm ET, ChannelAdvisor is excited to co-present a webinar featuring Bing's cashback program.  I'll be the MC and we'll have Bruce Curling who runs BD for Bing's cashback program.

I was reviewing the presentation with Bruce today and learned quite a bit about the program that (even though I've been tracking it closely) were news items to me and helpful datapoints I've never seen before.  For example, did you know there are some interesting differences between Bing SEARCH cashback and Bing SHOPPING cashback?

You can register online via www.channeladisor.com/webinars today - or just click here.

Yahoo! Editorial Update

Yahoo! recently updated the ‘Traffic Tickets’ category on their list of products or services that fall into unacceptable content. 

 

They define Traffic Tickets as “devices designed to evade speed enforcement by radar, photo-radar, or laser devices.”  Products like radar-detectors have been included in this category for a while, it appears they just widened the scope to includes additional deceptive devices.

 

So remember, you can sell these products on your site, but make sure not to bid on keywords for any product meant to evade law enforcement. Also you should not have any ad copy that mentions these devices.

 

I would also recommend that you check the editorial status page for any newly reviewed ads or keywords with the “disapproved” status.

Checkout the complete list of Yahoo! Unacceptable Content at:

http://help.Yahoo!.com/l/us/Yahoo!/ysm/sps/articles/editorial9.html

Written by Erin Gordon (erin.gordon (at) channeladvisor.com)