When you key a generic phrase like "real estate" into a search engine, you expect to get mixed results. But what about trademarked names like John L. Scott or Windemere? Should search results return those companies at the top of the page -- and also an advertiser who pays to be there?

That's a question worth asking. As search engines struggle with declining revenues, they are coming up with new and clever ways to deliver consumer eyeballs to advertisers. One way they can make money is to sell keyword searches, which leads the consumer to sponsors via banner ads. This works even better when the banner ads don't look like banner ads, but are the results the consumer is looking for.

Take Google.com, for example. According to the company, Google.com has more than 50 million searches per day, with 9.8 million unique users per month. That's a lot of potential customers to offer to advertisers, especially if you can categorize them.

When you key in "real estate" on Google, you get predictably mixed but well-targeted search results from companies as diverse as The National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts to Realtor.com to Google competitor Yahoo! Real Estate.

If you are like most consumers, you'll start clicking on the first search result and go down the line from there, if you don't find what you want behind door number one. That search begins at top of the page, and that is where searches and advertising may become blurred.

At the top of the real estate search results page on Google is a paid sponsorship banner that arguably looks a lot like a search result itself. These banners have the same lettering, underlining, and descriptive paragraphs as the sites featured in the search results. They appear with the key word that the consumer just typed in. If you typed in "real estate," and the first result said "Real Estate," in bold letters, wouldn't you click on it? Would you stop to see if it is an ad?

It could also be argued that the promos on Google are clearly ads, defined by pale pastel backgrounds with "sponsored link" on the right-hand side. But not everyone likes the practice of linking ads to keywords.

One broker has discovered that when his trademarked company's name is used on Google, it returns results with not his company, but a competitor's ad on top. "Paid advertiser or not, I don't understand why when you key in John L Scott on Google, it returns results with HomeGain at the top of the page," complains J. Lennox Scott, president of John L. Scott Real Estate. "It looks like a search result, not an ad, and I don't like it. John L. Scott is a trademarked name and has been for over 70 years. When you use our trademarked name, we should be the first result. We are who the consumer is looking for."

Other brokerages whose searches return HomeGain as the leader due to its ad placement include Coldwell Banker, Century21, Windermere, Arvida, and Ebby Halliday, among others. However when you key in RE/MAX, Long and Foster, or Keller Williams, no HomeGain ad appears. Ads do appear when you key in Keller Williams Real Estate or Keller Williams Realtors.

Why the inconsistency? Google representative Barry Schnitt, says that he does not know why the search engine returns the results from some words and not others, but that he would look into it. "We sell the key words, and then we work with the advertisers to optimize the ads," says Schnitt.

Schnitt explains that the banners were "premium sponsorships" and that Google goes to some lengths to make sure that the banners aren't mistaken for search results. "We label them as sponsored links and separate them from search results, and then we spell check with a "Did you mean?" and category results," says Schnitt.

Not good enough, says Scott, who claims that the key word "John L Scott" was used in HomeGain's ad as late as last weekend. By the time Realty Times looked into the matter, the search word was replaced with "Real Estate." A subsequent search of other brokerages produced the same results.

"That still doesn't explain why John L. Scott as a keyword equals "Real Estate" and "HomeGain,"" says Scott.

Cindy McCaffrey, spokesperson for Google, explains, there is no difference in trademarked words and other key words if they have relevance to a user's search. "The way we determine search results is through a fully automated process, so what we do is crawl the Web about once a month and index that information and rank results based on relevancy, and the way the search is listed has nothing to do with the advertising on the site.

"HomeGain purchased certain keywords that would match a user's search, and in this case, the reason John L. Scott matches HomeGain keyword is because of the word real estate," she continues. "The way it works is we look at the content on the site, so it is all about relevancy, so we can look at that page and make a determinatinon on the relevancy to the search query, that is all part of how the algorhythm works. It is returning a real estate result matching a key word in the ad.

Scott says he plans to pursue the issue. "Nobody paid me any money to wrap themselves around my name," he says. "The number one result is usually the one most closely associated with the search keyword, and that's why this is disturbing. Some people will click through to these advertisers without reading the advertising disclaimer. While they may find a few John L. Scott agents on HomeGain, they won't find our company site."

Results from key words "real estate," "realty," "new homes," "homes for sale," and other words put HomeGain among other advertisers at the top of the search results, and push Homestore, the largest search for new homes, and Realtor.com down the list. But it's the search for Realtor that has grabbed the National Association of Realtors' attention.

NAR spokesperson Steve Cook says the NAR is currently engaged in litigation on this very topic and is unable to comment, but he did say, "We would like to discourage advertisers from using the "Realtor" term, but we are not taking any legal action at this time. But Google should know that "Realtor" is a trademarked term and should not be used generically as a search category."

McCaffrey says that she was not aware that "Realtor" was a trademarked term.

If a legal precedent is set, says Cook, the NAR will pursue the issue more fully. "We have an ongoing war to protect the Realtor trademark, and every time it is allowed to be used improperly, it weakens our claim," explains Cook. The trademark is for our members to use, not for vendors to use in headlines or in advertisements."

Meanwhile, Google says its new program has been extremely successful. "Our clickthrough rates are four to five times higher than the industry standard for traditional banner ads," says McCaffrey, "because you are carefully targeting ads with particular search queries. Just as we try to be relevent with our searches, we are trying to be relevant with our advertising."