Update to Canadian, UK and Ireland ad text trademark policy

Last year, in an effort to provide better ads and a higher quality experience for our users, we adjusted our trademark policy in the U.S. to allow some advertisers to use third party trademarks in their ad text even if they don’t own that trademark or have explicit approval from the trademark owner to use it.

These advertisers include resellers, sellers of component, replacement or compatible parts corresponding to the trademark and informational sites.

We believe that this change has helped both our users and advertisers by improving the usefulness of text ads on Google.com and across partner sites in the U.S. For example, resellers of jeans have been able to highlight the actual brands they sell in their ad text making their ads even more specific and relevant for users.

Today, we're announcing that starting September 14 we'll be extending this policy to Canada, the UK and Ireland.

Separately, today we've also announced an update to our policy to enable advertisers across Europe to select trademarks as keywords. This update will also occur on September 14 and brings Europe in line with the trademark policy that already exists in the U.S. and most of the world today.

Our aim is to provide as much useful information to users as possible so that they can make better informed decisions. We believe that these changes to the ad text policy in Canada, UK and Ireland and our keyword policy change across Europe fits perfectly with this aim.

For more detail on our updated trademark policy in Canada, the UK and Ireland, please visit the FAQ in our Help Center.

Posted by Dan Stokeley, Product Manager