Here’s a question I just got:
I Googled my name in quotation marks to see what came up. Then I followed that up with my name in quotation marks, followed by an attorney. When I do that, other attorneys’ ads pop up. Does anyone know if this is a violation of Google’s ad policy?
People Can Bid On Your Name
People are allowed to bid on your name. This typically doesn’t happen that often, but what’s triggering it is that people are saying anytime the word attorney pops up, show my ad. So that’s what’s happening there.
A Possible Scenario
But if you have a well-known name or a slightly well-known name it is definitely possible to bid on other attorneys’ names. So for example, it would be like Morgan and Morgan in Florida. On the entire East Coast, everyone knows who Morgan and Morgan is, for the most part.
So if someone’s looking for Morgan and Morgan, there is a good chance that they’re looking for a personal injury attorney, and they might not have even hired anybody yet.
Are There Laws About This?
So people will typically bid on those names. There are definitely laws about it. I don’t know exactly what they are. I know there are with brand names. So for example, if Coke was going to bid on the word Pepsi, I believe that they can’t just bid on it.
I don’t think they can say just anything about Pepsi. But what they can do is they can do a comparison. Like before you drink Pepsi, see how Coke compares. You can kind of do it like that.
Why You Shouldn’t Worry Too Much About It
If it’s just with the word attorney, then the reality is that most of the time when someone searches for your name, unless you’re a really big firm like John Morgan or something, they’re probably a client looking for you. And all that is happening is that the other people are wasting their time.
And if they do get phone calls, it’s people that are looking for you and they probably have a lot of wrong number hang-ups and waste a lot of money. So I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
