Competitors using our company name as a keyword in Bing Ad results

[ChrisHolgate]

Hi,

I've not noticed this before but I've just seen that there are competitors of mine paying £1.80 or so a click in order to appear in the Ad area of Bing Search Results above our natural listings for our own company name.

Some of the adverts are pretty shameless; the keyword 'Re****h Cartridges' yields:

"
Re****h Cartridges Sale |

<address removed="">.co.uk

<address removed="">

For Very Cheap Ink & Toner + Free Delivery Try non-Re****h Cartridges

"

When using Google Adwords it appears that you can pay pennies in order to get listed in the Featured box when someone directly searches for your company name.  Presumably this is because if someone searches for you by name then naturally you are the most relevant result irrespective of how much is being paid and as such it helps the end user experience.

Is it possible that there is something that is wrong with our Bing campaign or is it expected that in order to stop adverts like this and be listed first for our own company name that we should get involved in a bidding war with competitors on the keyword ‘Re****h Cartridges’

As usual any help and advise you could give would be appreciated.

Chris

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[SEO5Team]

Chris,

File a complaint with Bing directly. If you own the trademark/copyright on your name then you can file a complaint.

Link to the copyright infringement form here

Link to the Trademark misuse in ad copy form here

If you do not , then you'll just have to bid on your own name to compete for the position.

[ChrisHolgate]

Many thanks indeed.

From the UK I'm currently getting the following from both links in IE, FireFox and Chrome so I'll try again in the morning!

'Errors happen... and you’ve found one. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Please try your request again later or contact the site administrator.

Thank you. We appreciate your patience.'

So, to clarify, would you anticipate that once the infringement has been filed that I would be able to bid just a couple of pennies on a keyword exactly matching our company name and get listed in the top spot?  Don't get me wrong, I'd be just as happy if no ads appeared at all and only the natural listings were present as long as competitors weren't being listed above us.

Thanks again for your help.

[SEO5Team]

Try calling them at 0800 633 5915. If you just have one other competitor bidding on your name, then yes, i think just bidding higher should do the trick.

[danatanseo]

I see this pretty commonly in my Adwords campaigns. In fact, one of my best performing keywords in one that includes our competitors brand name. Branded search can get sirty, especially the more competitive the environment is. The upside for you is that your branded search for your own brand is only going to cost you a few cents, while your competitors will have to pay a lot more. I would advise that if your competitor is bidding on your brand name, you'd better be in the game too. Hopefully they'll stop after they run out of cash or realize that it's not producing effective results.

Hope that helps!

[john4math]

Bidding on other brands keywords is not illegal (although Google recently settled out of court with Rosetta Stone in a case regarding this), provided they don't use your brand name in their ad text.  Sometimes it can happen with the ad text if the SEM manager isn't paying too much attention, and uploads some keywords (including your brand keywords) and is using dynamic keyword insertion in their ad text.  If you're seeing your brand in their ad text, go ahead and file a complaint.

If there are competitors bidding on your brand keywords, I would take action immediately and also start bidding on them. At least in Adwords, the cost per click for your brand keywords will be much lower than your competitor is paying for them, as you should have a very high quality score for those keywords.

[ChrisHolgate]

Just to provide an update to this for anybody that's interested....

I spoke to Bing and they don't give any kind of lower CPC rate in order to get listed under your own brand name - This is a shame as on Google we get away with a very low CPC since obviously we're quite a relevant result for someone searching specifically for our company name.

For the people that were blatantly playing off our brand name we were offered the chance of filling in a Trademark violation form however we wrote to the offenders and they have altered their adverts in a way that makes them a little less infringing.

It’s still a shame to think that we’re going to have to get in to a bidding war to compete with people bidding on our own company name.  C’est la vie I suppose.