This argument is a major component of the locksmith issue (ie. “Locksmith, City Name” searches).

Though I am an avid reader and agree with 99.9% of your positions, I have to disagree on this particular thread.

In this case Public Storage is a registered trademark and Google should not ‘put their thumb on the scale’ to divert searchers. Dilution of the trademark and possible intentional interference would be just two problems I can think of with skewing the algo to ‘dismiss’ branding that ‘Google thinks is too generic’.

Q-tip has spent a lot of money to make their name a ‘famous mark’ and trying to extrapolate between ‘common usage’ and ‘branding’ is a shaky area.

The same logic you apply can easily be applied to Q-Tip, which is “Oh, well they typed Q-Tip but what they are really looking for is a cotton tipped cleaning tool.” Where does that line of thinking end?

Thankfully, there is already a system of law in place that decides what is ‘common usage’ and what is not…the federal trademark system.

Regardless if you think ‘public storage’ is a generic term or not, they were issued a federal trademark on the terms.

Those results for that search were valid and any artificial attempt to manipulate the directory should be pursued by Public Storage ™ for violation of their trademark by Google. I believe that a more specific GPS or Triangulation based ‘centroid’ will give a better result in the future.

The real challenging cases are far more difficult because they are truly more generic terms. ie. Locksmith Austin for example or Austin Hotel.

The only fix is for Google to make a judgement call, do they make a ‘special exceptions’ rule for certain categories to ‘exclude’ branding and suggest a weaker reference ( In this example something like ‘Bob’s Storage’).

Additionally, the http://tess2.uspto.gov (Trademark) database could be incorporated directly into the algorithms to help mitigate some of the most blatant violations.

I know you suggested that “In the end the user is not necessarily best served.”

I understand the source of the position, however, I don’t think that dilution of branding or that the intellectual property laws and protections should be sacrificed to accomodate the exception to the rule.

In fact ‘branding’ may be the answer to many of the issues that the locksmiths are now facing. Imagine what would have happend if all of the locksmiths had made decisions to use well defined ‘brandable’ names instead of ‘city name locksmith’ and ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA1AAAAA Locksmith’ type names…they wouldn’t be getting hijacked all over the place right now. If they were at least they could mount some defense! But many of them took short cuts to try and ‘hackzor’ the Yellow Page Alphabetical Listings to be listed closer to the top of the heading and now they are paying for it by not being able to defend their ‘business name’ when scammers create false listings.

Bottom line, there are only so many common term type categories, those true ‘categories’ can be defined with some help from existing trademark law and conventions.

Let the trademark office sort out what is ‘common usage’ and what is not. I’m not quite ready to let Google take charge of that.

Selling Trademarks as Ad Words?

As I see it, there is very little difference between selling Trademark terms as ‘ad words’ and tweaking a fair algorithm to divert peoples searches to other results for no other reason than to ‘equalize the playfield’ or because ‘the branded company’s naming strategy is too good’.

In this case I believe diverting searchers intentionally to a different result than the one posted above would just be wrong. (If those are all real locations and not stuffed).

The only way I see to turn over the responsibility of defining what is common usage and what is not to Google is to require something like a new constitutional amendment…don’t think I’m ready for that either…then again maybe they would do a good job with it…like the good job they have been doing with the locksmith stuff

There are plenty of these examples, where the results are more a function of knowledge on the part of the listers rather than relevance on the part of Google. But I agree Local is mostly made up companies that “… don’t know how to promote their companies in this space”….whether they are big or small.

Mike

Google car rental new york city and Avis takes up 4 of the 10 spots. And Hertz takes up 2 more. In each case they only take you back to the main company home page. There are dozens of small car rental companies in New York that a consumer could choose from.

Part of the problem in this case may be that the smaller companies don’t know how to promote their companies in this space, but Google’s not helping matters.

Mike are you saying that you feel users searching for “public storage” are really looking for a public storage facility and not the largest storage company in the US?

I am arguing that some percentage of searchers are in fact looking for public storage not Public Storage. It may be a brand name to you, it isn’t to me. Carter himself said:

So we are working on variations on ways to handle those cases better

So I am apparently not alone in thinking that this might be the case.

Best Buy is not ambiguous. Public Storage is, and I would venture to guess, intentionally so.

Given the ambiguity, Google needs to handle it better. Part of the problem is that Google gives way to much strength to business title in determining relevance.

Not to worry about sounding “snarky”, I understand a good discussion sometimes sounds that way to some…not to me.

Mike

I’m still a little confused about the argument. Mike are you saying that you feel users searching for “public storage” are really looking for a public storage facility and not the largest storage company in the US?

Do you think that people that search for “best buy san jose” (which brings up a one box) are looking for the best buy in san jose?

Sorry I know that comment sounds a like snarky…..not trying to be rude.