Hi I've tried looking through the forum and there have been previous threads but I can't find an actual answer. I am having serious problems trying to appear for a two-word phrase on Adwords. Google have said that the first word is a trademarked term (although other terms also include it and are fine). This is fair enough if it applies to all advertisers but there are 6/7 competitors regularly appearing for this keyword and have been for many months. Having asked Google about this, they have said that there are ways around the system but are not prepared to let me know what they are. I have tried several things and they work for a few hours and are then taken down. I cannot understand how the other companies can stay up. Has anyone else had this problem? It is an important term for us. There are a lot of searches performed on this keyword and when our ads were appearing we were getting sales from this term as we still are from other PPC search engines. I did try increasing the bid amount to see if this made a difference but still no show. If all ads are not showing because of a valid reason then I could understand but now I feel our competitors are gaining an unfair advantage and Google are allowing this to happen. My boss as you can appreciate is not at all happy and thinks if our competitors can make it happen then I should be able to! Help!
The owner of a trademarked term can control who uses the mark and who doesn't. Sometimes authorized dealers are allowed to use the trademark, sometimes it takes written permission to be able to use it. There are also terms like "Tungsten" which are a trademark of a Palm product, so they can prevent the use of the term for their or similar products, but if you are selling tungsten hammers, then Palm cannot stop the use of it. You'll might wind up getting banned from adwords by trying to get around their policy. The best thing to do is to contact the trademark owner for permission to use the name - which is how others are able to use the mark.
Are you using the keyword in the title or ad copy or just bidding on it? You could try just bidding on it and using dynamic keyword insertion in the ad title and copy. I've seen that work a few times.
Not even bidding on the term now. Just bidding on the second word in the phrase and using megative words so that we try and match to the one we want. I've tried keyword insertion but doesn't work.