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Ask HN: Competitor putting Google ads against my company name

11 points by hnfwerr ↗ HN
I have a startup that has been in business for about a year. In the last few days I started to notice that a competitor put some Google ads when you search for my company name (or company domain).

What is worse is that those ads are a bit agressive. Like "the truth about company X" or "why X is a not the best solution for you", all linking to their pages where they try to sell their stuff.

Is that allowed by Google? I couldn't find a way to flag/report those. What would you guys do?

I know it is a good sign that we are growing, but could influence some customers against us by reading it.

*using a thrown away account.

Any help is appreciated...

thanks!

13 comments

[ 9.7 ms ] story [ 43.2 ms ] thread
hnfwerr
Btw, that company is actually bigger than ours and has been in business longer.
GiraffeNecktie
Here's a long shot but it might work. If the company is a dominant player in the field you might be able to intimidate them with a lawyer's letter that insists they cease and desist from anti-competitive practices (i.e. that could bring scrutiny from regulatory bodies).

IANAL so get some real legal advice before pursuing this angle.

dreamux
Your best bet might be to register your trademark with doubleclick, then lodge a complaint against your competitor using your product/company name in their advertisements.

Try here: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...

hnfwerr
We don't own the trademark (I mean, we never registered it officially). Since we are small, we are putting our money on things that we thought mattered more.

I guess we will have to register it.

thanks for the tips.

beagle3
In the US, registering a trademark (which you can easily do yourself - no need to pay a $300/hour lawyer) costs $75, or at least used to last time I needed to. How much is it in the UK that you're saving that money?
netcan
This is common practice. Google's policy is different depending on country and it changes pretty frequently. There are two issues here: Appearing on searches containing your company name and using your company name in ads.

The latter has a better chance of being removed upon complaint, especially if the landing pages don't have anything to do with your company.

In some countries (not the US, UK), Google usually acts in favour of the trademark owner and pulls both ads and keywords upon request.

You can make the complaint here: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&... Send it by mail or fax as well.

If they're doing negative advertising, you could also try going to them directly (or maybe via a lawyer). It could easily be a 3rd party agency writing these ads and the company management might be embarrassed to be caught.

hnfwerr
Common practice? I did a lot of search for popular companies / domains and didn't see such an add.

I really thought it wasn't allowed, but I guess I will try to fax/mail a complain...

mattbee
Worked for my company (UK) a few years ago once I'd sent a paper letter to Mountain View and waited a few weeks. Since then no ads now appear against our company name. Not sure how they handle it these days but I made an argument that our competitor was "passing off" their products as ours. What you're talking about sounds like libel.
kingofspain
My ads weren't even allowed to go live until I removed the word 'apple' from the heading. It was auto-flagged as infringing. This is UK so maybe they treat marks differently here?
hnfwerr
That's what I thought. But I couldn't find a simple way to report... From the other comments I guess I will have to fax/mail a complain to them.
danpat
We looked into this a while back, we're in a niche electronics market. Similar situation.

Basically, if they're using a trademarked term in their ad, then you'll have grounds for protest. Using your company name in the ad that is displayed is generally against the rules.

If they simply have an ad for their company show up for a keyword search for your company name, then that's generally OK, they're not displaying your trademark.

Examples:

  You: WidgetCo
  Them: WidgetsRUS

  keyword: widgetco

  OK Ad by them: We make the best widgets ever!  Try us today!
  Bad ad by them: WidgetCO sucks, WidgetsRUS are way better!
cvinson
Happened to me. Worse, competitors started copying my exact Adwords text and headlines as well.

I was able to remove the ads that included our trademark fairly quickly by contacting Google.

For the rest, you just have to start your own campaign against them. Since our own company's keywords are pretty low search competition they are extremely cheap to bid on. When competitors see that you are bidding against them, they might back off (they did in my case).

BobbyH
Have you tried contacting the competitor and asking them nicely to stop? In my experience with this sort of thing, a polite call or email is most effective. If you email, make sure that what you wrote won't be embarrassing if they publish your email.

If they are intransigent, explain that you understand but, just so they know, you will be pursuing a Tit for Tat strategy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat Communication really helps when you're tit-for-tatting, so contacting them will help on that front. If you are all relatively small, there are no antitrust issues at all.

If you are nervous about contacting them, you can pursue a tit for tat strategy anyway. To make it clear what you're doing, use the exact same copy that they do. If you want to be really direct, write a message to them in the ad copy.

In any case, you said they're bigger than you, so you'll actually get more leads from doing this than they get from keywords on your brand.