Google’s decision to change it’s trade mark policy in Europe will ‘hopefully not affect the time you have spent building your brand’ said Google USA’s, MD of Advertising & Marketing, Rob Torres.

Published: 25 Apr 2008

Google’s decision to change it’s trade mark policy in Europe will ‘hopefully not affect the time you have spent building your brand’ said Google USA’s, MD of Advertising & Marketing, Rob Torres.

‘Google is in business because of its users’ said Rob, speaking at the Travolution Summit in London yesterday. He went on to say that the change had caused few problems in the US and they did not expect to it to be a problem in Europe.

Ian McCaig, CEO, lastminute.com claimed Google’s decision to lift the ban on one company buying the right to use another's trade mark to trigger its own advert on Google would additionally cost him somewhere into 7 figures annually. He added that he struggled with the concept that this was a decision made only in the best interest of Google’s customers.

When questioned by Ian as to Google’s responsibility to the high spending corporations who had spent thousands with Google in recent years, Rob responded that Google is not a ‘pay to play model’ and that ‘hopefully it will not cost companies much more’.

The Google interrogation continued with claims that Google owned sites such as YouTube ranked more highly in the results of natural search than other relevant sites.

Rob replied ‘We’re trying to improve how we deliver results in natural search. Isn’t a video of Hawaii more relevant than a text advert?’

Video and other Web 2.0 features are certainly causing a stir in the travel industry. The overwhelming conclusion from yesterday’s conference was that the quest is on for a travel company to overcome the inflexible nature of key word search terms.

Yen Lee, Co-Founder and President, Uptake said ‘Today’s web search paradigm does not work for social media’ {..} Google will only look for key search term related items. However there are many ways to the same search terms and Google leaves little room for interpretation.’

Search and social media will be a major focus of EyeforTravel’s upcoming Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2008 in London next month. Google and Facebook will be discussing the key question ‘Who controls your customers’ online buying behaviour?’ as well as additional sessions from Hilton, Swissotel and Skyscanner examining key developments in SEO/SEM and video search optimisation.