I'm just looking at promoting a product for a popular TV show. When I do a search for the name of the show, though, only 1 advert appears. It's far too popular a show for nobody to be bidding on it, so what's going on? I'm guessing that it must be trademarked or something and so Google's not accepting adverts for it? Does that mean that if I include it in my keywords it won't show, or could it show and me be in trouble for not knowing?! If I search for something else that includes the show's name, like adding 'buy' to the name of the show, then there are 6 adverts. This again seems low, but more than for just the show's name. Does anyone have any experience of this? Is it up to Google to weed out the terms that are trademarked or are we supposed to know and refrain from using them?
Hi, yes I said I thought it was that I might not be allowed to advertise. And I don't believe it's not competitive as it was a HUGE show - probably as well known as Star Trek or something. Actually - I just checked that and it's a similar example. If you search for 'Star Trek' you get no ads. You can't say THAT's not a popular search! But if you search for 'Star Trek toy' you do get results returned. That makes me think that the name is trademarked and not to be bid on. But there are a few things I don't understand: 1) If (in this example) 'Star Trek' is banned, why isn't 'Star Trek toy'? 2) For the product I'm actually promoting (not Star Trek) I do now have an ad running for the name alone. There is one other person bidding too, but nothing else. If you're not supposed to bid on the name is it us, rather than Google, that should know? Does anyone have any experience of this?
google does not allow advertisers to bid on such keywords, for trademark issues.. or advertisers have figured out this keyword is not profitable....or maybe no one is advertising in this geography
QUALITY SCORE That's pretty much all there is to it. Google doesn't like to put ads on certain pages, when they think it'll detract from a user's experience (in this case, they probably don't want to show ads to users who probably are looking for show info).
Google IS allowing me to bid on the keyword, though. My advert appeared and was with just one other. I've paused it for the moment as it feels lonely! It could be a trademark issue, but if that stopped 'Star Trek' then why doesn't it stop people bidding on 'Star Trek toys' too? As for it not being profitable - that could be true - it could be too generic. But if your advert was specific on what you were promoting then it could be. And if nobody else is advertising then it ought to be cheap. So I'm not sure what's going on. Google's not got a block on the search term, but for some reason people aren't advertising. Put it this way - if you had a Star Trek widget to promote, you created the campaign and got the ad to appear for 'Star Trek' to see what the ROI was like but then noticed that you were the only one bidding on that search term - what would you do? And I mean a search term as well known as Star Trek, not something obscure. Would you think that as Google allowed it it must be ok? Or would you wonder if there was some legal problem you could encounter that might've scared off everyone else?!
If you are selling something Trekky, what percentage of searchers are going to be interested? Most will be looking for news, blogs, chat rooms, forums, etc - not merchandise. Thus your clickthrough rate would be very low, and Google would be looking for a high one (since you're the only advert). Your Quality Score would deteriorate, your minimum bids will keep rising, and it'll become unprofitable very quickly. That said, I suspect it's probably being stopped by Google, since e-bay would probably still bid on it...
Yes, that's what I mean - it may not be the optimum place for a high ROI, but I'd still expect there to be some ads!