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Booking.com using your name in Google Ads

Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories

John Moriarty started this discussion 10 years 8 months ago

As we all know the OTA's use our own hostel names in google adwords.

Hostelworld have the option to opt-out of this but has anyone contacted Booking.com to ask them.

I did and i got the following reply.

Hi John,

Tried calling there, booking.com will carry out online marketing on all of our property partners throughout the 180 Countries we work in and in the 41 languages, this is done at no extra cost to the property but is an integral part of how we generate the customer on the site,

We do not have the option of switching on or off as it is in our interest to consistently keep driving visitors to your page on the site, if you would like to give me a call I am in the office all of this week and will be more than happy to explain further if needed,

Kind Regards,

Robbie

I have to laugh at the line this is done at no extra cost. Yes you are using my name and taking direct bookings, Thanks for not charging me for this.

Here is an article on it http://www.tnooz.com/article/hotel-brand-hijacking-in-search-look-out-fo...

Does anyone have experience about this or have contacted booking.com

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Josh Hostels

10 years

There is some info here:
https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6118?hl=en

Also some links here:
http://searchengineland.com/interflora-wins-five-year-battle-over-google...

I don't know the accuracy of this info, but it looks interesting:
http://oko.co.uk/blog/are-your-competitors-using-google-adwords-profit-y...

"If your brand name is a registered trademark : Competitors can show their advert when users search for your name, but (usually) can’t use it in the text of an advert. If your brand name is not a registered trademark it will have no special protection in Adwords."

From a few articles that I've read online, it looks like it may be legal to bid on trademarked names, but maybe not to use trademarked names in the ad text. I didn't research it in depth.

I wonder why Yahoo and Bing aren't running ads when people search for "Google"... :)
https://www.google.com/search?q=google

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John Moriarty

10 years

Also can we bid on Hostelworld and Booking.com and show people in the google adwords text - Book Direct and Save. Might be interesting to see what they would do if we did this.

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