Was a bit surprised to see this when I was setting up some paid search this morning.

I suppose if MySpace is trademarked (as it is) and that Google does what it can to prevent advertisers from bidding on trademarked terms (which they do), that this makes sense…but it still came a bit out of left field, since I have been bidding on search strings that included “myspace” for well over a year now. I did notice earlier this week that the minimum bid for some normally low priced MySpace related search terms, had skyrocketed to $10 per click, which may have been a short term deterrent, which was then replaced by a straight out ban on the term.

In addition to the term itself being banned from the keyword portion of adwords, it can also not be used in the ad title or ad text.

I am a bit conflicted as MySpace and Fox become more and more aggressive with turf protection, particularly freezing out sites who’s sole purpose is to provide a widget, tool, or other MySpace add on. On the one hand, MySpace is a business and they are protecting their business which in simple terms, I get. On the other, there seems to have been a relatively harmonious and mutually beneficial relationship between MySpace and the widget/feeder sites over the years, each helping the fuel the growth of the other…so it seems a bit unfortunate that now MySpace is really acting a bit more bully-ish by whacking widgets, blocking code, and otherwise working to slowly suffocate the feeder sites out there.

Update – Just saw this on TechCrunch. This is becoming a bit of a slippery slope all around it seems. I have continually tried to remind myself over the past few years, that businesses that rely nearly 100% on another business to live (MySpace feeder sites for instance) are super high risk. As is demonstrated time and time again, a site like PhotoBucket (which is giant) owes so much of it’s traffic and growth to MySpace and lives through the hooks that it has implanted in MySpace, and as a result lives and dies at the whims of MySpace.