Trademark Keywords Dissaproved

[Manga]

I have a campaign that's been running for some time. Yesterday I received an email from Google stating that certain keywords in that campaign have been disapproved because they use a competitor's trademark. I thought with the new trademark policy we could use a competitor's trademark keywords for our campaigns now as long as we don't use the term in our copy. Did nobody inform the AdWords Team about this? What's going on here?

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Sorry for the confusion Manga - for explanation/details please see this recent, very (!) active thread:

[webmasterworld.com...] - particularly posts #4 and #9.

AWA

[Manga]

In your own trademark policy it specifically states:

"When we receive a complaint from a trademark owner, we will only investigate whether the advertisements at issue are using the trademarked term in ad text . If they are, we will require the advertiser to remove the trademarked term from the text of the ad and prevent the advertiser from using the trademarked term in ad text in the future. Please note that we will not disable keywords associated with trademark usage."

This is found at [google.com...]

Of particular interest is the last sentence. Let me restate it:

"Please note that we will not disable keywords associated with trademark usage."

So I ask again, why were my keywords disabled?

[Mark_A]

Manga AdWordsAdvisor I think might say and he or she I hope will correct me if I am wrong, that the answer is related to time and timing.

Time will make this issue clear to you.

It may be the only actual factual thing that can make this issue of your trademark bids as trigger words clear to you and to us all.

And there is therefore nothing to worry about or concern yourself about because it will all become clear.

I hope that helps you.

[Manga]

Sorry Mark, it didn't help me. If you see the link and excerpt I included above you will see that Google specifically states in its own trademark policy that they will not disable trademark keywords. It is right there in black and white. I don't know how much clearer it can be than that. So if that is Google's stated policy, then how can they disable my keywords for trademark reasons? Perhaps AdwordsAdvisor can explain that bit of logic to me.

[skibum]

I think the posting on the Google site about the trademark policy has preceeded the actual change. It is supposed to become the policy, however, as of now it has not yet been implemented.

[Manga]

Does it not seem reasonable that if Google posts a policy on their website as their official policy, that they should be held to that policy?

[Manga]

Interesting how Google's trademark page has suddenly changed. Seems Webmasterworld has some influence at the Googleplex ;)