• The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, June 3, 2008 11 AM

The controversial practice of using a rival's trademark on Google.com to drive traffic to your site is once again coming under the microscope. So-called "piggybacking", in which smaller advertisers use another company's trademarked terms in their text ads to drive traffic to their sites, is on the rise, and while Google and others have policies against the tactic, disgruntled marketers say the practice often goes unchecked.

Offline, "piggybacking" has long been a no-no, but on the Web, regulators have largely left the matter up to search providers like Google and MSN. Meanwhile, tensions over piggybacking have been mounting for years, as companies such as Marriott International Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group PLC, AMR Corp.'s American Airlines and Northwest Airlines Corp. say that the use of their trademarked names and slogans in other companies' search ads confuses potential customers and increases their cost of doing business.

Most of the ire is directed at Google, which controls 71.2% of the search market, according to eMarketer. Indeed, big spenders say they may punish the search king if they aren't satisfied with the way it deals with piggybacking. As Michael Menis, vice president of global marketing services at InterContinental, said: "This does play into our decision of overall spending -- it has to."

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