Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

My understanding is that having an paid search ad pop up when someone searches for a term containing a competitor's name is legal. So, if I work for Coke and place my ad next to whenever someone searches for Pepsi, this is legal. Not just legal, but can be very effective also.

What would not be legal is if the ad tried to make the person performing the search think that the paid ad is for one company, and not the other. So my ad for Coke can not make people think they are clicking an ad for Pepsi.

So, if it is legal, how can you stop it? You can't. About the only option would be to also place a paid search ad next to the search term and try to get higher placement than your competitor.

If you have the Rights to a name, then Google and the other networks can do something about it.

https://www.google.co.uk/adwords/learningcenter/19473.html#19475

You might also need to talk to an affiliate, if the ad is for an affiliate network (just check the URL in the adword for common affiliate links i.e. tradedoubler), in these circumstances, the network will sometimes ask their affiliate to stop using your name.

Good Luck

Actually, they may not be allowed to say that they are "the best" in Google, Superlative terms like this are not allowed UNLESS the claim can be backed up by a third party.

Amy, if you want to contact me offline, I'll let you know where I think you stand with this, but my gut feeling is that google will support you in not allowing your competitors to use your name, I have used this process myself for a number of clients, and each time, Google has stuck by us. Its not a quick route, but worth trying.

In the meantime, write to your competitors who do this with your name, asking them to stop, and let them know that you will be taking it up with Google and Yahoo!

Good Luck

patrick your right, thats a keyword spamming technique used for natural search results. These are often detected by the big search engines and the website can be removed from the index.