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Google UK trademark changes and navigational search
April 07, 2008
Google has announced that it will allow non-trademark owners to bid on trademarked terms in the UK and Ireland from May 5th, thus bringing the British and Irish markets in line with the US and Canada. This announcement has sparked concern of a "trademark bloodbath", but how big an impact will it actually have?
Last year we did some long tail analysis, showing that navigational search was on the rise in the UK. We looked at the top 2,000 search terms over the 4 week period ending in the middle of October during 2005, 2006 and 2007, categorizing them into ‘navigational’ terms (e.g. ‘myspace’, ‘ebay’, ‘bbc’) and non-navigational terms (e.g. ‘flights to spain’, ‘free games’, etc.). As the chart below illustrates, we found that navigational search was on the increase; in 2007, 76.0% of search volume for the top 2,000 terms was navigational in nature, up from 63.6% in 2006 and 58.2% in 2005
In other words, there has been a significant increase in navigational search. And because most of these terms are trademarked, that means that there has also been an increase in searches for trademarked terms. Consequently, this change from Google in the UK will have a significant impact on brand owners and affiliates.
On a related note, we have just published some data illustrating that ‘facebook’ has been the most searched for term in the UK for the last couple of weeks, overtaking longtime leader ‘bebo’ for first time.
Update (28 April 08) - we've carried out some additional research and quanitfied the potential impact that these changes could have on brand owners in the UK here.
Posted by Robin Goad at 02:00 PM
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Comments
seems fair enough to me. No one stops adverts in magazines from appearing alongside certain brand's. Why not let people see alternatives to their navigational search query to - after all, they will still appear top in organic listings
Posted by Phil wollindon | April 24, 2008 06:15 PM
Apart from a blatant effort to increase their ppc ernings, Google are abrogating responsibility for missrepresentation; something newspapers and TV cannot do. So this change may be acceptable in a litigious USA but its likley to cause damage to Google's brand long term when searchers get results they didnt want. That is what happens on Yahoo and MSN where brand hasnt been policed very well, and what reputation do those engines have compared to Google for the accuracy and relevancy of search results?
Posted by David Ranby | April 28, 2008 02:46 PM
Where do the UK & Irish Courts stand right now on infringing uses of a trademark owner's marks in an AdWords campaign? Do they have "initial interest confusion" doctrines similar to the U.S.'s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals?
Joshua Ridless
Posted by Joshua Ridless | April 8, 2008 05:25 PM