The co-operative I work for asked me to have a look at Google AdWords a few months ago. I duly set up an account and created a few simple ads for them to see how it all worked. In the end, it was put on hold until marketing had the time to put together a proper campaign but my original ad stayed out there and generate a few click throughs a day. Then yesterday I got this from Google.

———————————————-
Campaign: ‘Campaign #1,’ Ad Group: ‘Ad Group #1′
———————————————-

AD TEXT:

Buy a .coop domain name
Are you a registered co-operative?
Build your brand online with .coop
www.domains.coop

Action taken: Suspended - Pending Revision
Issue(s): Ad Text Trademark Term
~~~~~~~~~

SUGGESTIONS:
-> Ad Content: Please remove the following trademark from your ad: co operative.

–

With all the nice posts about Google, it seems out of place to complain but….

- Since when is the word ‘co-operative’ a trademark? Does that mean that all the co-operatives in the world (bar one presumably who has trademarked it) will be barred from using this word in all Ads?

- Why didn’t this ‘trademark infringement’ come to our attention sooner. For example when I wrote the ad four months ago? Doesn’t Google have some sort of automatic checker for this kind of thing?

- Further investigation reveals that “Due to trademark complaints, we do not allow advertisers to use certain trademarked terms or elements in their Google AdWords campaigns” of which the word co-operative appears to be one. So who complained about the use of that word in a Google Ad? And did enough people really complain that Google decided to uphold the issue?

- Why is there no obvious way to appeal this decision? I’m not saying that you can’t - you have to first edit the ad, make no changes and then click a button to appeal - but it’s not that obvious. Come on Google, you’re a friendly bunch - give us a bit of a clue here.

Rant concludes.