When Google Altered Its Ad Rules, Charities Paid the Price

In July 2023, Google said it would no longer restrict advertisers from using trademarks that belong to other organizations.

That change quickly became a headache for nonprofits that buy Google search ads to find donors. Other outfits, they discovered, were using their trademarks in order to draw internet traffic.

Samaritan’s Purse, a nonprofit that aids victims of natural disasters, found itself with new competition in the split-second auctions that determine which ads appear atop Google search results. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital competed with obscure search engines eager to bring more users to their sites. And misleading ads about U.N.H.C.R., the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, proliferated on Google’s search results, according to data from SpyFu and Semrush, two sites that track digital ads.

The pattern illustrated the unintended effects of Google’s policy changes and how obscure changes made to its advertising rules can have outsize repercussions on groups dependent on the world’s biggest search engine. In this case, nonprofits were forced to compete with companies that could better afford Google’s ad rates.

The conflict also cuts to the heart of concerns by regulators around the world that Google has simply grown too powerful. The company was ruled to be an illegal monopoly in search last year. By August, a federal judge will decide what changes it must make to foster a more competitive search market. In a separate case, a federal judge is expected to rule soon on whether Google violated antitrust law with a monopoly in advertising technology, the types of tools that place ads across the web.

Google said it made the policy change on trademarks as part of its effort to comply with Europe’s Digital Services Act, a multipronged law that requires tech companies to police their platforms more aggressively and stop ads that are targeted to users based on their identity.

A Google spokesperson said that competing search engines are allowed to run ads that take users to their sites, but the ads cannot be misleading or deceptive.

“To ensure things are clear for users, all ads on search are prominently labeled, display the advertiser’s website, and must indicate if they lead to another search engine,” the spokesperson said.

Whenever a person searches for something on Google, Google runs an automated ad auction. Advertisers create ads in advance and give Google parameters on their bid and budget sizes, as well as the types of searches they’d like to appear on.

Google’s systems look for relevant ads and decide whether to place any of them in the search results. The algorithms pick winning ads and determine how they’re ranked based on factors like the bid price, competition from other advertisers and the quality and relevance of the ads.

Before Google’s policy change, only product resellers and information pages (like product review sites) could use third-party trademarked brand names to promote themselves, as long as they provided the services they claimed to and were transparent.

With the update, Google’s search competitors could do the same. Google’s change to its trademark advertising rules led to an influx of ads from smaller search engines including Ask.com and Info.com, data from SpyFu and Semrush showed. More competition and successful bids meant higher ad prices, which was a particular problem for nonprofits. (Ad costs can also fluctuate depending on the quality of the ads.)

Dozens of domains, including Info.com and sites owned by Ask named Find Results Now and Quickly Seek, made bids against nonprofits to show up on Google search results pages. The headlines of the ads may have misled users into thinking they were clicking on a nonprofit’s official website, though the smaller type below often said users could search for the charity on their site. (Google stipulated that their ads “must be clear as to whether the advertiser is a reseller or informational site.”)

“Samaritan’s Purse Giving — Visit our website,” said an ad from Discover Results Fast, a niche search site owned by Ask. When users clicked the link, they were taken to search results from the Ask Media Group domain rather than the charity’s website.

When Samaritan’s Purse realized that other sites were competing against its ads on Google, it said it tried reaching out to some of them to address the issue. But the nonprofit said it did not reach out to Ask or Info.com, and declined further comment.

“We are aware that other organizations have been bidding against us on Google advertising,” a Samaritan’s Purse spokeswoman said in a statement. “Our team that manages Google ads has already been in touch with those organizations.”

In July 2023, Search Results Delivery, an Ask domain, said “Amnesty International website — right here.” The nonprofit’s website was not, in fact, right there. Under the link was an offer to “Search Here Now!” according to the text of the ad, which was archived by Semrush.

In December 2023, an Ask landing page called Look Up Smart used a common misspelling of St. Jude, the famous children’s hospital, in its ad. “Donating to Saint Judes | Visit our website,” the site said in the Google ad saved by Semrush, without any fine print specifying users were being taken to a search page.

Through 2024, Ask domains and other sites continued placing Google ads related to Samaritan Purse.

Ask Media Group and System1, the parent company of Info.com, both said they relied on automated tools to create ads, select bids and decide the types of searches they appear on. Ask said it used Google’s tools for these functions, while System1 said it employed both internal and Google technologies.

An Ask Media Group spokesperson said there was never a strategy “to profit at the expense of charities.” Nonprofits represent less than 0.001 percent of its ads on Google, the spokesperson said, and its ad price data does not indicate that its “very limited advertising in these areas had any systemic negative impact” on nonprofits’ ad costs. Charities can ask the company to stop using their names in ads, the Ask Media representative added.

Much of the time, the nonprofits held onto the first ad slot atop search results when users googled their names, but they had to pay more money to Google for the privilege, said five people who work with prominent United States and international nonprofits, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution from Google.

A Google spokesperson said the company has given charities more than $17 billion worth of free ads since 2003. Amnesty International, St. Jude and more than a dozen other major nonprofits declined to comment for this story.

Last fall, when the remnants of a hurricane devastated part of North Carolina, nonprofits including Samaritan’s Purse, Americares and Convoy of Hope all advertised on Google search, trying to collect donations to help those affected by the storms. Info.com posted competing ads, as did Ask Media Group under domains including Search Online Info and Info to Discover.

System1 said that its subsidiary Info.com did not intend to advertise against Samaritan’s Purse, and would cease any advertising that may have inadvertently increased the group’s costs. The company added that it follows trademark rules and Google’s policies, and the incident did not represent its broader business practices.

These types of ads persisted through December. On Dec. 30, Discover Results Fast was the third sponsored link when users googled Samaritan’s Purse.

Nonprofits focused on hurricane relief efforts, conservation and medical research and care ads said they have had to pay Google more for ads since Google made its trademark changes.

In the last two days of 2023, a major charity, which asked to not be named for fear of retribution, paid Google $200,000 to advertise, double what it paid on the same days in 2022, before the change took effect, said two people familiar with the advertising. The group depleted its marketing budget and had to stop advertising on its biggest fund-raising day of the year, Dec. 31. As a result, the people said, it lost out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

Other nonprofits are probably losing revenue from donors who never make it to their websites after being redirected to Ask’s sites, said Arielle Garcia, the director of intelligence at Check My Ads, an online advertising watchdog.

Google’s policy change “was another one of those sneaky little ways that they’re able to juice the revenue from their products,” Ms. Garcia said.