Adwords Leading to Inappropriate Search Engine Listing

I've encountered a problem using Adwords.
Imagine I run a company dedicated to provision of clean,
fresh water to
the poor.
This imagined company is called, say, "Provision of
Super Clean Water
for the Poor" (PSCW.com)
I advertise on Google Adwords using Google network.
A few days later, instead of typing PSCW.com into Google, I
type the
(imagined)company name "PSCW"
Down the list of results I find something analogous to the
following:

Totally Vile Water
PSCW Provision of Super Clean Water for the Poor (web
address)
then...Jobs for Water Cleaners at...

I try typing the company name into msn and I find something
analogous
to:

Have Your Water Poisoned
PSCW Provision etc...Break your pipes here.....

This may just be an analogy, but it's happened (but worse
than the
example given) and I've had to cancel the Ads.
Will these listings disappear if I simply leave the ads
cancelled and,
is there any way to stop this happening? I'm concerned that
this
could lead to permanently damaging listing.
Cheers

Hi Gerf,

I think you are saying that a third party is advertising
using the same
sort of keywords as you but with copy that is negative or
misleading?

Dropping your use of Google AdWords will mean that only the
negative
advertising is left. This is probably undesireable. Removal
of your
advertising *may* mean that the negative adverts will
disappear, but
since the CTR is probably low, the cost of maintaining the
negative
adverts won't be high.

MSN is currently mostly fed by Overture a.k.a Yahoo!Search
Marketing -
you'll probably need to deal with Overture about the
adverts on MSN.
They do have an editorial review process, which means that
the claims
in the advert should have been visible on the web site
referenced by
the advert. It does depend on the purposes of the people who
are
publishing the negative adverts.

Do you have a trademark? If so, you may be able to assert
your rights
using Google's Trademark policy. Search Google for
"AdWords Trademark
Complaint" and you should find that a high organic
listing is Google's
policy, telling you what you can do about this.

IMO, you can't leave your core values to negative
advertising. The good
news is that *usually* the best negative advertising has a
lower click
through rate than the best positive advertising. The way
that Google
works is that high CTR adverts pay less than low CTR adverts
- so you
can be listed above the negative comments for less...
Probably.
However, that's not true on Yahoo!Search Marketing and
there are other
games to play there - like using bids to force up your
advert cost,
while their cost is considerably lower...

There are some other things to consider... The negative
adverts may be
limited to the Google Network - that is, they won't appear
on Google's
partner sites like AOL and Ask Jeeves. By doing this, the
adverts get
about 20% of the exposure, but then they don't need a human
editorial
review. If the human editorial review is clued up, then the
adverts
will be given a low relevance *unless* the claims are
supported within
two clicks of the landing page, without requiring a form to
be
submitted. Low quality listings get to pay more on Google
than higher
quality listings. This mechanism was introduced to solve a
different
problem, but could probably be relied on to help you - the
negative
adverts are likely to take three to five days before they
hit the
review - but they can always submit a new advert to replace
the old
refused advert.

If someone is publishing untrue claims about your business,
then it's
probably time to call your lawyers. Don't raise your hopes
too high,
though... If I wore a black hat and did this stuff, I think
I could
make it extremely difficult (read this as expensive) to stop
the
publication of injurious material. Good job I wear a white
hat, eh?

Cheers, JeremyC.
-- 
Merjis : web marketing services : http://merjis.com/

Dear Jeremy
Phew! Thanks for the very detailed response.
The issue is actually rather bizarre. I don't believe any
malice is
involved. Because my "brand name" was unusual
and initially
garnered no results at all on any search engines,   some of
the search
listings are bringing up what could be described as
"contradictory
messaging".  It means that one company name (appears
to be) listed
under the name of another company. Some additional wording
is then
presented. This is in the context of search engine lists,
not the
Google Ads themselves. Taking an extreme example this might
be akin to:

Republican Party HQ (As the Title)
Democratic Party Campaign Documents: Access Here.
Then followed by entirely unrelated text like: Cattle
Ranching in Ohio
Foodstuffs

My guess is that this is in part the consequence of the
initial absence
of any search results for the term, but it may be kind of
similar to
"Java Coffee" versus  "Java (computer)
Language" versus
"Java" the place, or something else I don't yet
understand.
My hope is that this sort of thing "drops out"
of the search
engines if I turn off "Google Networks"
If there's a more generic issue, it would be helpful if
Adwords users
could "switch off" this kind of contradictory
messaging.  
Cheers

Ah, different problem, different answer 

There is, can not be, and should not be, any interaction
between paid
search and organic listings.

Google attracts visitors because it offers the best page of
search
results. When something else beats Google at that game, then
visitors
will leave Google for the better search results. So Google
cannot let
commercial considerations interfere with organic listings,
because, by
definition, if the organic results are the best already, any
advert
that affects the listings must make them worse... This will
reduce the
audience that Google offers to advertisers, so advertisers
will look to
spend money elsewhere... and the effort to
"maximise" income by
perverting the organic index actually leads to a lower
revenue.

As for the unrelated text, I'm not sure what Expedia
currently shows,
but for the last few weeks it has had something like
"drivers over 65
must present a valid license" as the text. That's
just bad SEO. Expedia
is a holiday company and the text should be something like
"make your
own holiday" or whatever the tag is. Google uses
automation, clued in
by semantic markup (header tags, emphasis tags, etc) to find
what it
thinks the page is about. If the owner of the page writes
the page
badly, then Google will think the page is really about
"download flash
player here" or "click here to enter".

Don't worry too much about other companies - most searchers
won't.
Especially if the competitor falls below about position 5
from the top.
That's over the fold and most Google users look at and
click on the top
3, almost more for those than the rest put together.

Under the conditions that you indicate, I'd think that paid
search
should continue. If your site is well-SEO-ed, you should
have a
relevant text in organic search and you can then use paid
search to
reinforce that message or to select a slightly different
segment of the
audience. Given the type of problem, I'd reinforce the
organic listing
(if it has appropriate text) with the advert.

There is a report (which, alas, I can't find again) showing
that
adverts and organic listings generated more total clicks
than the sum
of either alone - there is a synergy. I'd suspect that this
is
especially so when there is "cognitive
dissonance" - other listings
with content that is clearly not related. By seeing two
listings (one
organic, one paid) for the same organisation, with the same
messages,
despite the noise, *because* of the noise, you should get a
higher
volume of quality clicks. Easy experiment. Do an A/B/A test
- run paid
search adverts alongside your organic listing, drop paid
search for a
while, resume paid search... When do you get most clicks and
is there
an uplift in organic search clicks? If you don't see an
uplift when
using paid search - drop it 

Cheers, JeremyC.
--
Merjis : we get headaches thinking about this stuff, so you
don't have
to : http://merjis.com/