Fend Off AdWords Trademark Infringement with Google’s Help

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Posted on 30th September 2011 by in Web Analytics

tmName-brand keywords are some of the best performing you can find. In competitive markets, searching for trademarked terms usually reveals a dogfight, with the rightful owner at the top of the pile. Although bidding on competitors’ trademarked terms will often lead to poor quality scores (and thus a large bid surcharge), those low quality scores can be offset by the high conversion rate of these ready-to-buy visitors.

This situation is common because Google’s US trademark policy only applies to trademarks in ad copy; it doesn’t prohibit bidding on trademarked terms. While Burger King wouldn’t appreciate a McDonald’s representative standing outside their establishment holding the sign “Come to McDonald’s Instead”, there’s no trademark law against this, trespassing notwithstanding.

What companies can’t do is misrepresent themselves. It would be a trademark violation for McDonald’s to put a Burger King sign outside their own establishment. Are competitors using your trademarked terms in their ads? Google can help you – but you must take the initiative.

If you are a trademark owner interested in claiming your trademark and/or authorizing a third party to use your trademarked terms, fill out the AdWords Authorization Request form.

If you believe someone is currently infringing on your trademark in their ads, Google will perform a limited investigation. To get the process started, file a Google Trademark Complaint form. Note that Google only investigates trademark use in ad text (not keywords) within the United States. The investigation typically takes 6-8 weeks.

Keep in mind that Google does not monitor the use of trademarks in the display URL, so advertisers are potentially allowed, for example, to use the display URL www.shoeshop.com/Nike even if they are not an authorized reseller. (There are some exceptions to this rule such as being an authorized reseller or an informational website. See Google’s policy on resellers and informational sites.)

Fend Off AdWords Trademark Infringement with Google’s Help

Comments Off

Posted on 30th September 2011 by in Web Analytics

tmName-brand keywords are some of the best performing you can find. In competitive markets, searching for trademarked terms usually reveals a dogfight, with the rightful owner at the top of the pile. Although bidding on competitors’ trademarked terms will often lead to poor quality scores (and thus a large bid surcharge), those low quality scores can be offset by the high conversion rate of these ready-to-buy visitors.

This situation is common because Google’s US trademark policy only applies to trademarks in ad copy; it doesn’t prohibit bidding on trademarked terms. While Burger King wouldn’t appreciate a McDonald’s representative standing outside their establishment holding the sign “Come to McDonald’s Instead”, there’s no trademark law against this, trespassing notwithstanding.

What companies can’t do is misrepresent themselves. It would be a trademark violation for McDonald’s to put a Burger King sign outside their own establishment. Are competitors using your trademarked terms in their ads? Google can help you – but you must take the initiative.

If you are a trademark owner interested in claiming your trademark and/or authorizing a third party to use your trademarked terms, fill out the AdWords Authorization Request form.

If you believe someone is currently infringing on your trademark in their ads, Google will perform a limited investigation. To get the process started, file a Google Trademark Complaint form. Note that Google only investigates trademark use in ad text (not keywords) within the United States. The investigation typically takes 6-8 weeks.

Keep in mind that Google does not monitor the use of trademarks in the display URL, so advertisers are potentially allowed, for example, to use the display URL www.shoeshop.com/Nike even if they are not an authorized reseller. (There are some exceptions to this rule such as being an authorized reseller or an informational website. See Google’s policy on resellers and informational sites.)

Fend Off AdWords Trademark Infringement with Google’s Help

Comments Off

Posted on 30th September 2011 by in Web Analytics

tmName-brand keywords are some of the best performing you can find. In competitive markets, searching for trademarked terms usually reveals a dogfight, with the rightful owner at the top of the pile. Although bidding on competitors’ trademarked terms will often lead to poor quality scores (and thus a large bid surcharge), those low quality scores can be offset by the high conversion rate of these ready-to-buy visitors.

This situation is common because Google’s US trademark policy only applies to trademarks in ad copy; it doesn’t prohibit bidding on trademarked terms. While Burger King wouldn’t appreciate a McDonald’s representative standing outside their establishment holding the sign “Come to McDonald’s Instead”, there’s no trademark law against this, trespassing notwithstanding.

What companies can’t do is misrepresent themselves. It would be a trademark violation for McDonald’s to put a Burger King sign outside their own establishment. Are competitors using your trademarked terms in their ads? Google can help you – but you must take the initiative.

If you are a trademark owner interested in claiming your trademark and/or authorizing a third party to use your trademarked terms, fill out the AdWords Authorization Request form.

If you believe someone is currently infringing on your trademark in their ads, Google will perform a limited investigation. To get the process started, file a Google Trademark Complaint form. Note that Google only investigates trademark use in ad text (not keywords) within the United States. The investigation typically takes 6-8 weeks.

Keep in mind that Google does not monitor the use of trademarks in the display URL, so advertisers are potentially allowed, for example, to use the display URL www.shoeshop.com/Nike even if they are not an authorized reseller. (There are some exceptions to this rule such as being an authorized reseller or an informational website. See Google’s policy on resellers and informational sites.)

Fend Off AdWords Trademark Infringement with Google’s Help

Comments Off

Posted on 30th September 2011 by in Web Analytics

tmName-brand keywords are some of the best performing you can find. In competitive markets, searching for trademarked terms usually reveals a dogfight, with the rightful owner at the top of the pile. Although bidding on competitors’ trademarked terms will often lead to poor quality scores (and thus a large bid surcharge), those low quality scores can be offset by the high conversion rate of these ready-to-buy visitors.

This situation is common because Google’s US trademark policy only applies to trademarks in ad copy; it doesn’t prohibit bidding on trademarked terms. While Burger King wouldn’t appreciate a McDonald’s representative standing outside their establishment holding the sign “Come to McDonald’s Instead”, there’s no trademark law against this, trespassing notwithstanding.

What companies can’t do is misrepresent themselves. It would be a trademark violation for McDonald’s to put a Burger King sign outside their own establishment. Are competitors using your trademarked terms in their ads? Google can help you – but you must take the initiative.

If you are a trademark owner interested in claiming your trademark and/or authorizing a third party to use your trademarked terms, fill out the AdWords Authorization Request form.

If you believe someone is currently infringing on your trademark in their ads, Google will perform a limited investigation. To get the process started, file a Google Trademark Complaint form. Note that Google only investigates trademark use in ad text (not keywords) within the United States. The investigation typically takes 6-8 weeks.

Keep in mind that Google does not monitor the use of trademarks in the display URL, so advertisers are potentially allowed, for example, to use the display URL www.shoeshop.com/Nike even if they are not an authorized reseller. (There are some exceptions to this rule such as being an authorized reseller or an informational website. See Google’s policy on resellers and informational sites.)

Google Analytics Premium – Powerful, Innovative, Intuitive, Guaranteed

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Posted on 30th September 2011 by in Website Optimization

It’s finally here – the enterprise version of Google’s free tool. Today’s official announcement of Google Analytics Premium puts the rumors to rest and opens up a whole new set of questions. Leading the list: Will there be enough value added to make it worth the price?

Let’s look at what you’ll get for the fixed annual fee.

Google Analytics Premium

More Processing Power Sweeps Away Limits

Many of the limitations in the Standard Edition (the new name for free GA) are swept away by the sheer processing power behind GA Premium. And Google’s not fooling around – the increases are impressive.

With GA Premium, Google guarantees faster, intra-day processing for up to 1 billion hits per month. That’s two orders of magnitude beyond the current limits! Even though free GA’s hit limits are not strictly enforced, GA Premium’s guarantee seems to imply that even if your data is not processed on dedicated servers, it will be the practical equivalent.

Increased processing power also enables highly-requested features like unsampled advanced segmentation, unsampled report downloads, and large report downloads with up to 1 million rows of unaggregated data. Instead of 5 custom variable slots, you’ll get fifty.

The key word here is “processing” – we’re still not talking about access to raw data, only processed data. And no uploading of your own data into GA Premium. You get what they process into your reports. The good news is that those reports are bigger and better, too.

Fast-Paced Innovation Includes Attribution Modeling

One of the most exciting new reports will be (not yet included) Attribution Modeling for Multi-Channel Funnels. Sure, it’s great to see a 30-day path to conversion instead of the last click. That doesn’t mean every step of the path should get equal credit for the conversion. With this new tool you’ll be able to customize and test attribution models, built on top of your conversion paths.

Google says it will roll out innovations like this and more at a rapid pace in the coming months. This year’s overhaul of the underlying structure of the ga.js source apparently makes it easier for GA engineers to build in new features going forward.

The free product won’t be left behind either. In the last 3 months alone – and earlier today with Real-Time, Google’s added many great features to its Standard Edition. It makes sense though that only users of GA Premium will have access to the new features that require the most intensive processing.

Intuitive Interface Remains Easy to Learn

Do more advanced features mean GA Premium will be harder to learn? Au contraire, says Google. One of the biggest benefits of the free product is the intuitive interface, and the interface for GA Premium will be nearly identical.

Google’s betting that they’ll come out ahead in any comparison with other paid products if you can find actionable insights more quickly and easily. There’s undeniable value in being able to make better and more timely business decisions simply because your data is more accessible and usable.

Maybe the value of all the new features, combined with GA’s familiar interface, is still not enough for you to justify the expense? There’s one more big difference between free GA and GA Premium.

SLA Guarantees Up-Time and Data Freshness

With GA Premium, you finally get a Service Level Agreement backed by 24/7 emergency support from Google if its guarantees fail. Specifically guaranteed:

  • 99.9% on Collection up-time
  • 99% on Reporting up-time
  • 98% on on-time Data Freshness (within 4 hours)

In addition, you get dedicated phone and email support 10 hours/day, 5 days/week (in your local time zone) from your GA Premium Authorized Reseller – a GA certified partner who’s been approved to support GA Premium.

If you’re already heavily invested in another paid analytics solution, GA Premium’s appeal undoubtedly depends on your level of satisfaction with your current solution. What’s your reaction to Google’s new offering and how do you think it will impact you (or your clients)? Please share in the comments.

Google Analytics Premium – Powerful, Innovative, Intuitive, Guaranteed is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

Google Analytics Real-Time – Watch Your Data Update Within Seconds

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Posted on 30th September 2011 by in Website Optimization

GA has always been about what happened on your site yesterday or last week or last month. Wouldn’t you like to see what’s happening right now?

Okay then, right now, go to the Dashboard tab and look for the Real-Time section. You may need to look under the Home tab if you read this after the next interface design update.

If you don’t see the Real-Time section of reports yet, you will soon. Within 1-2 weeks following today’s announcement everyone should have access. In the meantime, check out our video of Real-Time timelines in action.

Same Code, New Timelines

Real-time data will automatically start to appear for any page you’re currently tracking with GA. You don’t have to add any new tracking code.

The most dramatic feature of Real-Time reports is the moving timeline on the right. It shows all the pageviews that started in the last 60 seconds. It’s moving because it’s continuously updating. You don’t even have to press a button to update.

If you happen to have a low-traffic site and no pageviews are showing up in that 60-second timeline, visit one of your own pages and watch for it. You could even time it to see how many seconds it takes to appear on the timeline, if you haven’t tried that already!

There’s another pageview activity timeline on the left. It moves too, and shows how many pageviews you had each minute for the last 30 minutes. Both timelines appear at the top of each Real-Time report.

The moving timelines can be mesmerizing, especially if you’re used to waiting for data in GA’s standard reports, which may take up to 24 hours to appear. It would be nice to be able to set up alerts, as we can do for GA Intelligence, but that feature is not available in this version of Real-Time.

Ways to Use Real-Time Data

Rather than keeping one eye glued to your Real-Time data, it’s most useful to monitor the impact on web traffic during events with specific times. And beyond the Real-Time Overview, there are three other Real-Time reports you can drill down into for a little more detail as you analyze on the fly. Here are some examples:

  • You launch a new ad campaign with an email blast. Check the Real-Time Content report shortly after you send the email, and drill down into your landing page. You’ll see active visitors on that page for your campaign source and medium.
  • You run a contest on social media that has followers looking for your periodic Tweets or Facebook status updates. After each tweet or update, watch the Real-Time Content report. Or even check out the Locations report to see where all those socially networked visitors are. You can drill down into any country and see a list of cities.
  • You run a TV commercial that may drive traffic to your website. Right after the spot airs, check the Real-Time Traffic Sources report to see visitors by medium. Even if you use a vanity URL that redirects to a campaign-tagged URL, visitors may simply search for you. You can drill down into organic or cpc to see search sources and keywords.

Watching real-time for the above types of events is more likely to lead to actionable insights than letting Real-Time run in the background all day and continually checking it.

Real-Time Drilldown for Campaigns

What’s Not In Real-Time

Real-Time reports do not include profile filtering. That extra processing step is currently bypassed in the interest of optimizing speed. So even if you’re looking inside a filtered profile, keep in mind that no data is being filtered out of the Real-Time reports.

Let me emphasize that this doesn’t mean that all your GA data is now real-time. Some of GA’s standard reports have deep functionality that also requires too much processing to be reported instantly. You have to look in the Real-Time reports for real-time data.

How will you use real-time data? What do you like best? Are important features missing? Please share in the comments.

Google Analytics Real-Time – Watch Your Data Update Within Seconds is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

Fend Off AdWords Trademark Infringement with Google’s Help

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Posted on 30th September 2011 by in Web Analytics

tmName-brand keywords are some of the best performing you can find. In competitive markets, searching for trademarked terms usually reveals a dogfight, with the rightful owner at the top of the pile. Although bidding on competitors’ trademarked terms will often lead to poor quality scores (and thus a large bid surcharge), those low quality scores can be offset by the high conversion rate of these ready-to-buy visitors.

This situation is common because Google’s US trademark policy only applies to trademarks in ad copy; it doesn’t prohibit bidding on trademarked terms. While Burger King wouldn’t appreciate a McDonald’s representative standing outside their establishment holding the sign “Come to McDonald’s Instead”, there’s no trademark law against this, trespassing notwithstanding.

What companies can’t do is misrepresent themselves. It would be a trademark violation for McDonald’s to put a Burger King sign outside their own establishment. Are competitors using your trademarked terms in their ads? Google can help you – but you must take the initiative.

If you are a trademark owner interested in claiming your trademark and/or authorizing a third party to use your trademarked terms, fill out the AdWords Authorization Request form.

If you believe someone is currently infringing on your trademark in their ads, Google will perform a limited investigation. To get the process started, file a Google Trademark Complaint form. Note that Google only investigates trademark use in ad text (not keywords) within the United States. The investigation typically takes 6-8 weeks.

Keep in mind that Google does not monitor the use of trademarks in the display URL, so advertisers are potentially allowed, for example, to use the display URL www.shoeshop.com/Nike even if they are not an authorized reseller. (There are some exceptions to this rule such as being an authorized reseller or an informational website. See Google’s policy on resellers and informational sites.)

Fend Off AdWords Trademark Infringement with Google’s Help

Comments Off

Posted on 30th September 2011 by in Web Analytics

tmName-brand keywords are some of the best performing you can find. In competitive markets, searching for trademarked terms usually reveals a dogfight, with the rightful owner at the top of the pile. Although bidding on competitors’ trademarked terms will often lead to poor quality scores (and thus a large bid surcharge), those low quality scores can be offset by the high conversion rate of these ready-to-buy visitors.

This situation is common because Google’s US trademark policy only applies to trademarks in ad copy; it doesn’t prohibit bidding on trademarked terms. While Burger King wouldn’t appreciate a McDonald’s representative standing outside their establishment holding the sign “Come to McDonald’s Instead”, there’s no trademark law against this, trespassing notwithstanding.

What companies can’t do is misrepresent themselves. It would be a trademark violation for McDonald’s to put a Burger King sign outside their own establishment. Are competitors using your trademarked terms in their ads? Google can help you – but you must take the initiative.

If you are a trademark owner interested in claiming your trademark and/or authorizing a third party to use your trademarked terms, fill out the AdWords Authorization Request form.

If you believe someone is currently infringing on your trademark in their ads, Google will perform a limited investigation. To get the process started, file a Google Trademark Complaint form. Note that Google only investigates trademark use in ad text (not keywords) within the United States. The investigation typically takes 6-8 weeks.

Keep in mind that Google does not monitor the use of trademarks in the display URL, so advertisers are potentially allowed, for example, to use the display URL www.shoeshop.com/Nike even if they are not an authorized reseller. (There are some exceptions to this rule such as being an authorized reseller or an informational website. See Google’s policy on resellers and informational sites.)

Fend Off AdWords Trademark Infringement with Google’s Help

Comments Off

Posted on 30th September 2011 by in Web Analytics

tmName-brand keywords are some of the best performing you can find. In competitive markets, searching for trademarked terms usually reveals a dogfight, with the rightful owner at the top of the pile. Although bidding on competitors’ trademarked terms will often lead to poor quality scores (and thus a large bid surcharge), those low quality scores can be offset by the high conversion rate of these ready-to-buy visitors.

This situation is common because Google’s US trademark policy only applies to trademarks in ad copy; it doesn’t prohibit bidding on trademarked terms. While Burger King wouldn’t appreciate a McDonald’s representative standing outside their establishment holding the sign “Come to McDonald’s Instead”, there’s no trademark law against this, trespassing notwithstanding.

What companies can’t do is misrepresent themselves. It would be a trademark violation for McDonald’s to put a Burger King sign outside their own establishment. Are competitors using your trademarked terms in their ads? Google can help you – but you must take the initiative.

If you are a trademark owner interested in claiming your trademark and/or authorizing a third party to use your trademarked terms, fill out the AdWords Authorization Request form.

If you believe someone is currently infringing on your trademark in their ads, Google will perform a limited investigation. To get the process started, file a Google Trademark Complaint form. Note that Google only investigates trademark use in ad text (not keywords) within the United States. The investigation typically takes 6-8 weeks.

Keep in mind that Google does not monitor the use of trademarks in the display URL, so advertisers are potentially allowed, for example, to use the display URL www.shoeshop.com/Nike even if they are not an authorized reseller. (There are some exceptions to this rule such as being an authorized reseller or an informational website. See Google’s policy on resellers and informational sites.)

Fend Off AdWords Trademark Infringement with Google’s Help

Comments Off

Posted on 30th September 2011 by in Web Analytics

tmName-brand keywords are some of the best performing you can find. In competitive markets, searching for trademarked terms usually reveals a dogfight, with the rightful owner at the top of the pile. Although bidding on competitors’ trademarked terms will often lead to poor quality scores (and thus a large bid surcharge), those low quality scores can be offset by the high conversion rate of these ready-to-buy visitors.

This situation is common because Google’s US trademark policy only applies to trademarks in ad copy; it doesn’t prohibit bidding on trademarked terms. While Burger King wouldn’t appreciate a McDonald’s representative standing outside their establishment holding the sign “Come to McDonald’s Instead”, there’s no trademark law against this, trespassing notwithstanding.

What companies can’t do is misrepresent themselves. It would be a trademark violation for McDonald’s to put a Burger King sign outside their own establishment. Are competitors using your trademarked terms in their ads? Google can help you – but you must take the initiative.

If you are a trademark owner interested in claiming your trademark and/or authorizing a third party to use your trademarked terms, fill out the AdWords Authorization Request form.

If you believe someone is currently infringing on your trademark in their ads, Google will perform a limited investigation. To get the process started, file a Google Trademark Complaint form. Note that Google only investigates trademark use in ad text (not keywords) within the United States. The investigation typically takes 6-8 weeks.

Keep in mind that Google does not monitor the use of trademarks in the display URL, so advertisers are potentially allowed, for example, to use the display URL www.shoeshop.com/Nike even if they are not an authorized reseller. (There are some exceptions to this rule such as being an authorized reseller or an informational website. See Google’s policy on resellers and informational sites.)