A dedicated Search Help Centre has been launched by The Interactive Advertising Bureau, UK, to offer marketers advice on best practices, legal regulations and policies related to search marketing.

Advertisers and a panel of agencies from the IAB UK’s Search Council along with biggies like Yahoo, Microsoft and Google will be supplying the content for the website. The intention of this free resource is to regularly provide updated information on issues like invalid clicks, user privacy, trademarks, click fraud, intellectual property, and copyright. Help and advice will also be included in it for advertisers, on the process of hiring a search agency.

IAB emphasised on Intellectual Property forming a key focus for the centre. Their official release mentioned:

Protecting intellectual property is a growing area of concern because it has become extremely valuable; therefore marketers need to understand what campaign property they own and how to protect it.

The chair of the IAB Search Council, Jack Wallington, has been quoted as saying:

For advertisers this is very important because they may not be aware of the growing value of intellectual property in search marketing and how to handle and protect it. For agencies it will become a larger issue; they need to decide exactly what they are willing to share with each other and their clients – what is and is not competitive information for instance.