Will my AdWords campaigns fall foul of Google's TOS?

[Joff]

Am I correct in thinking that Google doesn't like it when users bid on the same keywords using different accounts, with the effect of flooding sponsored links with adverts for all the same company?

I have a feeling my campaigns may be a problem...

For example:

I'm setting up some AdWords campaigns for a company that makes widgets of all different colours.

The company has two divisions to wholesale the widgets out to the world, each division selling it's own colour of widgets - one sells blue and the other sells red.

The parent company also makes white widgets which both divisions also sell.

Each division has it's own AdWords account with keywords unique to their own division, using negative keywords of the other division's widgets.

E.g. for Blue Division:

cheap blue widgets
buy blue widgets
-red widgets

E.g. for Red Division:

cheap red widgets
buy red widgets
-blue widgets

Now when it comes to general keywords and the white widgets, do I have a problem?
BOTH divisions will be touting for sales on white widgets and also general terms like "buy widgets","cheap widgets", etc.

Both divisions ARE separate companies, completely unique site content, different customer base, different staff, etc. All that is shared is a selection of the product range.

But for the general terms, there will be instances where they are both listed.

[netmeg]

Write them and ask. I can tell you that when my customer with the three separate websites (and three separate companies, all in the same general industry - one sold equipment, one was a locator service to find a particular type of contractor, and the third was for training seminars) had three separate AdWords accounts, Google contacted us and told us we'd have to consolidate them all into one account, because in some cases we had ads running for the same keywords, for different aspects of the same theme.

That was years ago though; maybe something has changed since then.