In the beginning, there was the internet, and then there was real life. They were two completely individual, separate entities; one did not need to interfere with the other, and all were content. It was with the growth of the internet that “real life” began to take notice. Before long, the line between the two began to blur, and all sorts of controversy erupted concerning copyright infringement, intellectual property, and identity in a medium that was hardly tangible. This controversy continues even today; we are constantly subject to new problems, mistakes and dilemmas when it comes to what’s allowed in real life and what’s allowed online.

Let me get to the point. There exists a great deal of frustration currently when it comes to trademark infringement in online searching. Let me explain: when you search up a keyword on, say, Google, you will be returned not only a page of search results, but advertisements. These advertisements are put up by advertisers who have entered that keyword — the one you searched — into their campaign. So, say, if you were to search up “ketchup”, you’d receive results and ads for all sorts of things associated with ketchup. Now, what if you were to enter “Heinz ketchup”?

That’s a trademark of a specific company, but any advertiser can, in theory, enter that keyword so that their ad is returned when you search Heinz. Acme Ketchup Co. can, if they satisfy a complicated list of requirements, have the top ad placement when you search for their competitor. The problem exists herein: is it legal for an advertiser to associate their ad with a keyword that is a registered trademark of their competition?

In some cases, such as Coke and Pepsi, companies come to agreements that allow them to use each other’s trademarks to further their own advertising campaign. It is safe to say, however, that most of the time, two competing companies will not have approached this agreement. Is it fair for Acme to gain business from Heinz searches? Should trademark law apply here, in the virtual world of the internet, where things are possible that just aren’t in real life?

France’s Tribunal de Grande Instance de Nanterre has twice ruled that no, this is not okay. In two instances they have ruled in favour of trademark owners, determining that it is illegal for search engines to permit advertisers to include trademarked keywords in their keyword lists when not associated with the company bearing that trademark. However, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has ruled the opposite — in the case of GEICO versus Google, the court ruled that GEICO had not submitted sufficient evidence that the sale of the GEICO trademark as a keyword constituted infringement.

There does not yet exist a final rule when it comes to keyword trademark infringement. Each instance must be settled individually in or out of court in the country in which it applies. Gone are the days of the untouchable internet, during which an intelligent, tech-savvy elite could evade the law by utilising new techniques that had never before been imagined by the lawmakers and thus never outlawed.

Via a post on Digg’s News Feed I discovered that, apparently, Yahoo’s search has blocked natural results pointing to Google’s Adsense and Adwords. Trying to boost their own marketing sales, perhaps? It’s true that Google controls a large (over 50%, reportedly) portion of the search advertising market share, but come on, Yahoo!, this isn’t elementary school.

Read the full discovery here, with details on how the author figured out this little search bug.

**Update:

This post has getting a lot of traffic recently and the comments received show that there is confusion about what Google Advertising Professional is. It’s a program that Google offers, to train and give certification to people and companies that use the Google Adwords system. Google AdWords are the paid ads that you see in Google search results. In order to becoming a certified “Google Advertising Professional,” you read or listen to the materials provided in Google’s learning center, then you take a test. If you pass this test, Google will certify you. Anyone, whether they take the Google AdWords test or not, can log into adwords.google.com and set up advertising through their advertisers program.? This post has nothing to do with the scam being discussed in the comments section. I hope that this clears up some of the confusion that we have been receiving in regards to this post, and the Google learning center and the Google Adwords advertising platform.

**Update 2:

In response to Karen’s Comment, I want to clarify further. At the time that this post was written, more than two years ago, there was no one selling a “Google Pro Kit” – so the title of the blog post at that time had nothing to do with it. In response to her last comment, I did a quick Google search to see why this post is suddenly getting a huge spike in traffic. The results of the Google search make it seem obvious almost immediately that this kit is a scam. In absolutely no way do we recommend the product titled “Google Pro Kit.” Google’s Adwords Learning Center and Certification have nothing to do with the kit. I hope that this information helps you.

So, over the last week, I’ve been spending a large chunk of my work time learning Google’s AdWords system. They’ve got a pretty neat setup going thanks to Macromedia Breeze — it’s a Learning Center, which reminded me fairly strongly of the learning modules I was subject to in high school. Masterfully narrated (I was charmed by the perfect enunciation of the narrators) and presented in slide format, the Learning Center was concise and well-laid-out. My only suggestion here is that any aspiring Google Advertising Professional bring along a notebook and pen, because it’s dreadfully easy to zone out under the soft, rounded lull of those loyal Google voices.

It’s recommended on the Learning Center page not to attempt the entire thing in one sitting without large amounts of caffeine (thanks, Google — come for the search, stay for the humour) and I’m going to have to second that. Mastering the entire thing can take around eight hours. Even internet marketing can get tiring after eight hours — I know, stunning — so split it up between a couple of days. Each slide presentation is timed from start to finish, and most are between three and eight minutes long. You can pause, play, skip and rewind in the slides, or go from chapter to chapter, and then after each chapter is a quick quiz covering the finer points of the presentations. The quizzes are between two and five questions long and, if you pay enough attention to the corresponding slide presentation, you can easily answer every question correctly.

Bug-wise, I was fairly impressed. There were only three instances in which I found skips or bugs in the Learning Center. Twice, the wrong quiz was associated with a slide presentation, and once, the wrong sound overlay track was matched with a slide. All-in-all it was fairly easy to keep on track. There were very, very few grammatical and spelling errors in the whole thing; a lesser man wouldn’t have noticed any, I suspect.

The Google exam itself is administered by a company called Thomson Prometric. It costs $50 USD, payable immediately online in efficient Google fashion, and is a one-and-a-half-hour long timed test. There’s a practice test available before you start the timer, but I didn’t bother with it as I had just gone through and reviewed with all the Learning Center quizzes. The test format was quite easy to use — it was unobtrusive, and they made it simple to mark questions for later review, go back and forth between questions, or summarize the entire test at any point. Upon completion, they asked me if I was sure I was done (and of course that moment of panic set in — am I really ready to turn it in?), which, I thought, was a nice touch. Nobody wants to waste $50 USD on a misclick.

Anyway, I passed. I am now a Google Certified Advertising Professional. I could tell you (almost) anything about Google Adwords, thanks to their Learning Center setup (and let’s give me some credit, here — it’s at least a little bit due to my enormous dedication). Another reason to love Google above almost any other internet megastar, which, I must admit, I do. A little bit more every day.