Competitor Using Our Store Name As Keyword

[mahlon]

In the last two days, two competitors unknown to us till now, are showing up when I do a search for our store name. Never before has this been done as the store name is unique. Both stores do sell some of the product we have.

The interesting thing is, when I hover over "Show Order", I see the address (order.store.yahoo)for both sites that are doing this.

And I just now noticed as I was typing this that they also have the similar layout but have different store names, URL's and a different look and product. The contact email addresses do not match the URL's in any way either.

Is Yahoo doing this?

[bingymon]

Hi Mahlon,

Yahoo are not doing this. Its probably two or the same people buying your terms for their yahoo stores.

If the term they are bidding on is a trademarked term that you own, you can issue a complaint to google and they will block them from buying ads using the trademarked term/s.

If you dont have the trademark on that term, I believe its free game.

[martin58]

How do you get Google to stop letting a competitor use your company name?

[bingymon]

I believe this should do it:

[google.com...]

I'm no lawyer, but you need to actually own the trademark in quaetion. Not just the company.

[martin58]

Thanks for the info!

[401khelp]

BusinessWeek Online has an interesting article today on this issue:

Searching for Trouble?

Keyword ads are big earners for Google, Yahoo!, and AOL, so trademark lawsuits currently in the courts could spell major hassles.

[businessweek.com...]