Well, it is really annoying, there's no way we can know which keywords are trademarked and not allowed in ad headline, keywords when putting up adword campaigns. I guess maybe common sense does, like PS2, PS3, Xbox, etc. however, I see lots of paid search listings with these keywords in the ad. Are all these advertisers went through the approval process? I don't know. But for small fish affiliates, it is nuts to ask for that.. I'm promoting one online video game rental merchant right now, and most ppl will (i guess) think of keywords like -online video game rental -rent video games online -cheap video games -rent PS2 games etc etc and really these all fall into one narrow topic and going deep into the misspellings or keyword variations.. We need to think of going wide. So I came up keywords of each individual video games they have. And once some of these keywords generates traffic and sales, i can then go deep into digging different variations. However, when I write my campaign, one of my keyword is super smash bros brawl, and one ad is something like Headline:Super smash bros Brawl Body: Play blah blah blah for FREE for 10 days Blah blah blah www.mysite.com And Ban!!! it is a big red exclamation mark, "this ad need to be reviewed"..well I guess this is a trademarked keyword, and can't be used for headline and keyword... It kinda sucks... And what about keyword like rent PS2 game online? it has PS2 in it...would it still be violating the trademark policy?? You have absolutely no clue until the point you write your ad and add your keywords..but at this point aren't we wasting lots of time on the keywords that are trademarked.
I think the copyright thingy has been completely removed by Adwords for good. However, please re-verify it.
"Looks like it's more the word free then anything else." - sorry I didn't get you fully, and i'll really appreciate it if you can explain a lil. it's kinda of strange, some keyword even though it is a very trademarked word Like GTA , it isn't trademarked in google, and I can make both my ad copy and keyword having this word, most likely it is the owner of that trademark didn't request google to stop advertisers to bid these. This is why it's kinda annoying to not knowing what keywords I dig up might be end up not allowed
There really is no way to just know which ones are trademarked or not. Just expect if its a logo, product name or company name, its probably trademarked. The next best thing is to just try it and see what happens
I guess, it's like shooting in the dark... I had keywords like GTA, I thought it will definitely be a trademark after the super smash bros brawl problem....but guess what.. it is perfectly fine to put GTA in the headline as well as using this keyword...... ...