back to article Google extends controversial trade mark purchasing policy

Google has increased by 190 the number of countries in which advertisers will be able to pay for their ads to appear when a rival's trade mark is typed into its search engine. That policy previously only applied in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland. Google will still investigate the use of trade marked terms to trigger …

COMMENTS

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  1. Alasdair S
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    Google used to be a good search engine

    This is another change that adversely affects the accuracy of google's results (in the broad sense, including adverts). Google used to be a really good search engine but its results are becoming less and less relevant.

    Room is opening up for a new lean, mean search engine that focuses on giving accurate results (a bit like google itself used to do).

  2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    Re: ...used to be a good search engine

    "This is another change that adversely affects the accuracy of google's results (in the broad sense, including adverts)."

    But the only people who care about the accuracy of Google's adverts are the people paying for the ads. People using Google *as a search engine* just filter the ads out (mentally or otherwise). All *they* care about is accuracy in the non-broad sense.

    "Room is opening up for a new lean, mean search engine that focuses on giving accurate results (a bit like google itself used to do)."

    Sadly, whilst the demand is there, I don't think any room is "opening up". Google's decline in search performance is not due to Google using poorer algorithms than 10 years ago. It is due to the rise of an entire industry bent on subverting *whatever* algorithms anyone uses. The search engine most resistant to SEO is wikipedia, but you can "game" that as well (El Reg passim).

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Its a difficult one

    If brand ABC decided it didn't want anyone bidding on ABC and I wanted to buy the ABC 200 and searched on Google for "ABC 200", I would expect adverts for companies selling the product to be allowed? But if they don't sell that brand....it's a different story.

  4. Cris Page
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    Borked.

    One reason I dont use Google is that when I search for a particular product *name* I expect that name to be top of the listing as the "most" relevant.

    This is especially important when searching for software, a friend recently installed some pretty useless antispyware software as this was the top of the listing when they searched for a program they had heard me mention - the top listed one WASNT the one they wanted, but the similar name (obviously to confuse) led them astray.

    The fact that Google is happy to party to deceptions like this means they are not trustworthy, and I am happy to avoid anything with thier name on it. Web Ferret manages to find whatever I want, without me having to worry about being sold out to line Googles coffers.

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