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Comment by vgeek | Hacker News Reader

The article fails to mention that shortly after this made the rounds in the marketing communities, eBay suddenly got a very large SEO penalty. Conspiracy theories aside, I once inherited a large Adwords account with nearly 25% of spend dedicated to branded KW bidding. Simply dialing back bids by 90%+ dropped impression share from 95% to 80%, but the paid branded clicks just shifted to organic branded clicks-- confirmed by lining up Google Webmaster Tools click level data (since Google stopped providing organic keyword data in GA 10 years ago).

Brand keyword bidding is simply a rent-seeking behavior. Sure, it can help with new entrants trying to grow their visibility (albeit likely ineffectively) as an alternative to an incumbent with more brand recognition, but the majority of brands are simply paying protection money to keep their own site, that users are explicitly seeking, above the fold on search results.

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We've found exactly the same thing. It's extremely important to differentiate between branded and non-branded keywords. (And to be diligent about filtering out all variations, misspellings, etc., of branded searches from non-branded campaigns.) While our testing didn't show 100% waste in branded advertising, we did find approximately 80-90% of branded clicks would otherwise have come through organically. So we do still do a small amount of branded search advertising, but with an assumed actual CPC of 10x the nominal CPC (and therefore quite a low maximum bid). For non-branded ads, we assume the true CPC is much closer to the apparent one.

The branded keyword game is very sneaky, though, and one place where google can (and does) make a killing.

The trick is, if you have a particularly strong or unique brand, you can count on being the number one organic result. HOWEVER, if competitors bid on your brand and you do not, they end up above your brand in results as part of the the paid/promoted position.

This usually forces brands into competing in paid positions on branded keywords that they should "win" naturally. Google rationalizes this by charging more relevant results a lower rate, but it still doesn't excuse the fact that the brand shouldn't have had to pay in the first place.

So far we haven't found the presence of ads above our organic result seems to make a big difference, but I expect that could vary a lot based on the brand and what competitors are advertising. Probably a good idea for anyone planning to spend significant ad dollars to test for themselves.

i wonder if competitors bidding on your brand should be construed as trade mark violations - after all, if a user searches a brand and a competitor's site or product is shown as part of advertising, then aren't they making use of your brand to confuse the consumer (a classic trade mark violation)? The only problem is that the user isn't "seeing" the brand and confusing it, but instead is searching the brand and the search result is confusing deliberately.

That's an interesting idea. I'd certainly like to see that case made.

This was shared in another comment in the thread: https://veritasbusinesslaw.com/trademark-and-google-adwords/

> Google has been sued frequently for trademark infringement because it allows advertisers to purchase trademarked names for use in AdWords by competitors.

> Google has never lost one of these cases.

> Google derives 97% of its revenue from advertising, annual revenue that was over $109 billion as of 2017.

> These conflicts illustrate a serious problem with how internet advertising is conducted.

"> Google has never lost one of these cases."

Perhaps they settled every single case. Show us one that went to trial.

Not a chance. Google is trying to match search intent and so are ads. If the ads are relevant to what's being searched, then it receives a low quality score and isn't shown often, if at all depending on how irrelevant it is. If I am a lawn mowing company, I can't just show my ads whenever someone tries to lookup apple because they're a popular company.

Is it actually confusing anyone? If I search for Pepsi and some of the ads are for Coke or Dr Pepper, that seems fine to me. If it's counterfeit Pepsi or something that's clearly a different case, but if someone searches "ebay mittens" I don't think it's ridiculous to allow a mitten store to have an ad that says "we sell mittens too!".

The worse I've seen has been malicious malware spreading with an exact copy of the company site. There's also morally/legally dubious combative advertising eg: "Better than X" when searching for X.

Best part of course is that Google has been constantly making it less clear whether something is an ad, so the tricking is really primarily done by Google themselves. The advertising is really just paying to be the first search result.

It definitely confuses our customers. We fairly regularly receive unpleasant tickets asking where their order is. Once we dig in we often find they did not order with us, but with a competitor who they thought was us.

Yeah, once you realize the most profitable Google search terms are already the top organic result paying to be on top, you realize Google's business is the guy who shakes down storefronts for "protection" to avoid their windows being broken in by the local gang on a global scale.

"That's a nice brand you built there. Ya know, it'd be a shame, a real shame, if one of your competitors was to end up above you on the search results page. I could, uh, make sure that doesn't happen."

>Yeah, once you realize the most profitable Google search terms are already the top organic result paying to be on top

What if you aren't the top organic search and you want to drive traffic. For example "mesothelioma lawyer" is a very profitable keyword that'd you would want to show up on top. If there weren't any ads you would need to out SEO other law firms and hope Google doesn't screw you by adjusting the ranking algorithm.

That's the obvious legitimate purpose of selling the ad space. If that's where Google's money was coming from, I wouldn't be irritated. Well that and if they didn't profit on the malware/support scam ads.

However, I suspect if we were to remove Google's revenue from those two categories, they would not be in the Fortune 50.

The problem is specifically with branded searches. When someone searches not "mesothelioma lawyer", but rather, "Kirkland & Ellis LLP.", and they get an ad for some other law firm above that.

Its worse: you search for a government service, like issuing a passport or a driving lisence, that by law and by logic only the government can provide , and the top result is often a scam.

To be fair to Google, they've only known about this issue for at least 10 years and I'm sure they are working hard on fixing it. It's not as easy as you think since the only legitimate domains in such a scenario would be .gov and there isn't any available technology to whitelist this tld - as far as I know?

When my household moved last year two of the adults fell for this scam with change of address. For the record USPS will change your address for free in person or for $1 online (using a credit card cuts down on fraud and they have to charge something to actually use the CC). Well two people fell for bullshit Google ads and paid $85 each. One got her money back. The other did not. I am sure Google will fix it any day now.

Except your storefront is on Google's land...and people find your website using their services...and you are free to not ever do any kind of ppc or seo work on your site at all.

It just so happens that Google's land includes all of the main streets where people shop. But, you are free to set up your store on a backstreet alleyway a few miles from the town centre. That way you won't have to pay the protection fee. That's some real freedom right there.

In your analogy, are not stores on main streets taxed higher than stores on back alleys?

That's interesting, so google ads don't work yet simultaneously if you don't use them your business will just break down into nothing. How does that work?

It's a protection racket that allows others to use your trademark to sell their product if you don't outbid them.

I don't think you can use a trademark in ad text. But companies still try to wiggle around this.

But you can use a trademark as an ad targeting term... which feels a little trademark-violation-y to me.

https://veritasbusinesslaw.com/trademark-and-google-adwords/

Looks like several companies have tried to sue Google for this, but Google threw a lot of money at the problems to prevent them from winning.

Trademark litigation can be expensive, but you can't win every trademark case just by throwing more money at the problem. If there was a legitimate IP violation then someone would have won a case against Google by now.

I think that's a very reductive take.

The idea that I can buy placement in searches for a competitor is not clearly a "legitimate IP violation" but I think it's also not clearly "not a legitimate IP violation".

Is it good for society that I can redirect users who intend to be looking for a competitors' products? Its a complex subject that I'm not sure the courts have examined the repercussions of properly. The counterfeit and deception arguments in some of the suits certainly seem like they have some merit to me.

Courts are responsible for interpreting the law, not for considering repercussions. If you think the current situation isn't good for society then take that up with the legislative branch, not the judicial branch.

> the majority of brands are simply paying protection money

Exactly this. Google should be forced to not allow bidding on other companies‘ brand kw.

That would mean you can just buy 'hotelsincornwall.com' and no one will be allowed to bid for 'hotels in corwnwall'. You are now facing a different problem.

I don’t think you’d get a trademark for that name…

Why not? 'Apple' is a trademark right?

Apple is a distinct name in that industry. You can call yourself Apple and sell toddler toys without violating any trademark. You can’t call yourself “X in Y city” because it’s not distinct in that industry unless you literally are the only unique one in that city.

Should Basecamp and Trello not be allowed to advertise on searches for "Jira alternatives"?

>that shortly after this made the rounds in the marketing communities

I'd love to read more about this. Do you have any recommended "marketing communities" that I should visit?

https://searchengineland.com/google-ebay-penalty-cost-197031

This relates to the ebay penalty. I think one of SEland's founders actually left to take a job at Google as an evangelist. You can probably search for "ebay seo penalty" and find more references. Other notable penalties that were well documented include RapGenius and GV backed Thumbtack and Nest, which quickly had their penalties reversed if I recall correctly.

https://seobook.com/blog is the only place I follow any more, since it is more critical of the digital marketing ecosystem. There are so many snake oil salespeople and clueless marketers, so this is a refreshing commentary.

https://seroundtable.com is good for rumors and breaking news.

https://www.seobythesea.com/ a more technical blog that frequently examines Google's patents.

Very kind of you. Thanks.

Thanks for the links, but regarding seobook.com/blog: it is quite strange to see a blog about SEO without HTTPS, which is a ranking signal since 2014 (1).

(1) https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2014/08/https-as-r...

Not only without HTTPS, but actively stripping it, too!

No idea why he doesn't have https enabled, but he probably knows it is disabled and explicitly wants it that way. He has covered plenty of technical SEO topics, but is more of a commentary on the industry now. I'd probably filter out the politics, but a good majority of the marketing/advertising content is spot on.

I believe spending money on ads is the only way to get any sort of favoritism from a major tech company, and also being a famous/important person

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