Using our company name in ad

[Nezzo]

I recently came across a few instances where companies are using our exact company name in their ad text for PPC ads. Our company name is not a common word in the dictionary so it doesn't seem to be an accident. None of these sites sell our products because we're a direct sales company. I've seen this on Google with Shopping.com and BizRate.com as the URL. Some of them even go as far as to use our name and then list a product that is NOTHING like what we sell.

I tried contacting them and have not heard back from them. The ads are still up and appear to be unchanged.

Has anyone had any experience with this? Is there anything we can do about it?

Thanks

[beesticles]

Companies like Shopping.com, Ebay and the like tend to bid on enormous keyword lists (millions, usually) in the hope that they can buy extremely cheap PPC traffic. The keyword lists are not checked by people, so there's a lot of nonsense. I'm sure elsewhere on WebmasterWorld you'll find extrememly amusing and tasteless examples of this.

So your company name has just been picked up in the process, along with countless others no doubt. You've got two courses of action. Firstly, register your company name as a trademark with Google (see here [adwords.google.com]). Secondly, you can bid yourself for your name. You should be able to buy the clicks for a low CPC, even with the other advertisers there.

[Nezzo]

Thank you for your reply.

I guess that's where I'm confused. We already are bidding on our company name as a keyword. It shows up right below the text box on the SERPs. Their ad shows up in the right margin of the page; falsely advertising our company.

So there's nothing that says they can't use our name as a keyword in their ads? It's used as ad text as well as simply the ad title.

I'm sure our name is trademarked but I'll have to look into it.

Will I need to provide a trademark id or number to make a complaint?

Thanks again

[phranque]

outside the us and canada you might get some help.
this is google's trademark complaint resolution policy [google.com].