Here is the ball, play amongst yourselves, let us know if anyone gets hurt!
Microsoft Adcenter has come up with a revision to the way they handle trademarked terms in Adcenter ads. It is essentially saying this
- Advertiser: Get permission.
- Trademark Holder: Make sure you police your trademark.
This policy is essentially like throwing kids into a school yard and asking them to play nice. If you don’t play nice, yell for the teacher. We’ll get there when we can.
Here is an excerpt from the trademark policy email MSFT just sent out.
What’s changing?
It will now be the advertiser’s responsibility to obtain permission from the trademark owner to use a trademarked term in their ads. It will also be the trademark owner’s responsibility to address ongoing incorrect usage of their trademark term(s) directly with third-party advertisers. Microsoft adCenter will no longer intercede to obtain permission for the advertiser wanting to use a trademarked term.What does this mean for my search advertising?
- Your ads may display next to other ads that contain your trademarked terms.
- Affiliates, resellers, and third parties may show up against queries for your trademarked terms.
- Competitor’s ads may show up in search results against queries for trademarks in certain scenarios, due to match types other than exact.
For example, if a generic term is included in the overall search query, advertisers who bid on the generic term may show up in the search results.
I can’t say that I blame Microsoft for changing this policy. What will be most interesting is to see how they handle the Trademark Concern complaints.
- What proof will the request to display that you have permission to use a trademark?
- What proof will the require that a trademark holder is, in fact, the trademark holder?
There are a lot of questions. If they were a bigger player in the PPC field, it would matter more. For now, it is just an interesting topic.
Are Paid Links Really Evil? Of Course…
NOT!
Shouldn’t the bottom line be about relevance? I am not completely sure that I understand the point of a paid link being considered as something as evil and taboo. If I am running a shoe store and I have the opportunity to pay for a link in a blog about basketball shoes, should I? Of course I should. It is relevant and useful for the visitor of the basketball shoe blog and for the visitor to my site.
Instead, the search engines like Google feel it is “better for the user” if I create some B.S. link bait to get other sites to link to mine. How can you say that me creating a silly “throw the ball in the basket game” and getting other sites to link to mine (many off topic) is better than me spending $20 a month advertising via a link purchase. I just don’t get it. How is the more value to the user by generating link bait? There isn’t.
Greg Boser brought up this point at SES. He asked why coming up with irrelevant link bait is rewarded while purchasing a relevant ad on a niche site violates Google’s guidelines.
Google, please get your head around this one. At the very least, lay out your reasons.
Yahoo Search Marketing Coupon Code
Yahoo SM, formerly Overture, publishes coupon and promotion codes all of the time. If you have registered a business, incorporated, or signed up for a free Yahoo Local listing (view the ventureN local listing as an example) you might have recieved a promotional code from Yahoo Search Marketing. If not, try this… USDM0149. This is worth $100 credit on a new account or $100 savings on assisted setup.
Visit using this link and you will see the promo code prefilled:
http://sponsoredsearch.yahoo.com/growbusiness
They folks over at Blogs and Bucks go into a bit more detail and show a simple method to look for a particular code that will give you $100 on a $5 open.
DirectoryM Pitching Backlinks and SEO Value
Is the value of a backlink going to diminish at some point? Paid links are frowned upon by Google (just read www.mattcutts.com/blog for more) and yet we have major companies pitching the value in selling you a back link.
DirectoryM is one such company. I received an e-mail a short time ago that pitched a backlink and the SEO value that it would provide your site. Link Selling.
Contextual Backlinks
Single Region: $9.95 per month
All Regions: $147.75 per monthThese premium links are designed for maximum SEO benefit through:
* Contextual Focus
* Regional Orientation
* Trusted Branded Directory Origination
* Flexible 30-character display… Match the display link text to the key word/phrase of your choosing
* Direct link… Link directly to any page on your website
Will this hurt DirectoryM? How about Businessweek or BizJournals. This is a clever way for the companies who use the DirectoryM listings (businessweeek.com and bizjournals.com to name a couple) to insulate themselves from link sales. At least that is what you might think. At the end of the day, a web site is responsible for their own site.
Now there is Reason for the Google Pack
When Google announced that it was going to offer a free suite of tools called Google Pack, I felt pretty confident that there would be some useful applications in there. When announced, I expected them to have something that would be very useful. I expected that there would be some flavor of OpenOffice. When it didn’t include that, and it included dogs (resource hogs) such as Norton and RealPlayer, it was a big miss. When Google puts out an app, even in Beta state, I expect it to be pretty tight and efficient. The initial offerings in the Google Pack didn’t fit that description. Back then, I didn’t recommend it to anyone!
Google Adds StarOffice to the Google Pack
There is now a very useful application that you would normally have to pay for. It is called StarOffice, and is free instead of the $69 version from Sun. The Google Pack is headed in the right direction. When installing the pack, you can select the apps that you want to install (a nice feature). Only install what you need. Don’t install hogs like Norton, or an intrusive application like the RealPlayer.
Go ahead and buy that $349 PC with an AMD chip without a version of Microsoft Office. You can use the apps in the Google Pack to get along just fine.
As far as the anti-virus offering goes, I am very surprised that they didn’t select a great product like the free version of AVG anti-virus. I have used it, and recommended, it for years.
Search Engine Relationships
Having been in the search marketing and web development business for the past 10 years, I assume a numbr of things. One of them is that anyone running an e-commerce business has an understanding of where their pay-per-click ads (PPC) will display. Many merchants aren’t aware of the reach that can be achieved with a campaign at Yahoo Search Marketing or Google Adwords.
I came across a search engine comparison chart at Mikes Marketing that provides a simple layout of the relationships between the major search engines and what powers the paid listings, search results and the directory. Take a look at Mike’s Search Engine Chart.
For something more interactive, you can always take a look at the Search engine relationship chart at Bruce Clay. BruceClay.com has been a leader in search marketing for many years. They have a nice toolset for any webmaster and also offer top notch paid tools. From their chart, they provide links to details regarding each search engine and provide submission URL’s for each. 
It can be a good idea to see what other sites are doing to reach their audience and obtain top rankings. A focus on the internal (on site) methods that Bruce Clay is using should give you some insights on areas where you site might be lacking. They have always been a white hat shop and have always been at the top of the game.