Hi Guys

I appear to have a REAL mental block with AdWords - I simply do not understand how it works. PLEASE do not just direct me to Google AdWords Help - because I have read and reread it and there is nothing there that helps me with this!

A client of ours wishes to stop other people from bidding on/using their trade mark as a keyword. Google's trade mark policy appears generally to be that they don't want to get involved. However, several of our clients are insistent that if they own the trade mark in the relevant country that we should be able to get Google to stop allowing it to be used as a keyword.

The main issue we have is this - how do you know if someone is using your trade mark as a keyword? Google appears to suggest that if someone is using your trade mark as a key word you should take it up directly with that person, so how do I find that out?! Or do I just tell Google it is a trade mark and hope they care?

Please help!

Cheers

Just search for the trademarked keyword and see what are the adwords coming for the Searched keyword and contact each site manually stating you own the keyword but I guess nothing will going to happen. All you can do is bid for adwords for the keyword more than what they are bidding for.

Many thanks for your reply, it's appreciated. But I still don't understand! Did you mean to do a search on Google for the trade marked keyword then contact all the sites that come up?

Perhaps I am not explaining myself clearly enough. The main problem here is that this is a brand belonging to our client - so it is their house mark with the generic word "diets" - although the phrase itself is also trade marked. How can I tell whether it is the generic "diets" that is triggering the ads?

Also, you say that I would just have to bid more for the keyword than the competitors. Does that mean that if I bid the most other people cannot use it as a keyword?

Any more info would be gratefully appreciated!

You cannot restrict any one for bidding on any term and the most you can do is bid higher than them so that they are always shown below your ad.

As an example webmaster-talk is a forum but can they restrict any body from not bidding on adwords for there domain name. I as a forum owner can also do that.