Google PPC policy reversal welcomed

8th May 2008

One online travel agency has said that it is pleased with Google's recent decision to reverse its policy on trademark keywords.

Earlier this year, the search engine said that it will no longer view trademarks as keyword triggers from April 4th.

This means that trademarked keywords can be bid on by any companies using Google's pay-per-click (PPC) service.

Andrew Gardner, chairman of Cruise.co.uk, told Travel Weekly that this was good news for his business.

"Our natural clicks are enormous but because our name is so generic we couldn't get it trademarked, which we wanted to do," he said.

"Big companies have been bidding on our name."

The PPC policy change has come under fire from some quarters but Google said it needed to make the decision in order to help advertisers access the most relevant keywords for their businesses, as well as to expand choice for search engine users.