Always without™

Syzygy

I deal with this same issue on some pages. I took the opposite tack. I place a space between the name and the trademark symbol, precisely for the reason you suggest. At times the appearance on the page can look goofy (like at the end of the line and the name is on one line and the symbol is on the next) but I'm about traffic as opposed to esthetics. I'll gladly break a rule in order to rank in the SERPs.

When someone Googles, who keys in "KleenexTM" as opposed to just "Kleenex". Additionally, when I look at results from Overture's keyword selector tool I don't ever remember seeing a keyword and TM symbol combination.

I'll throw in my 25 years as a copy editor to say that Syzygy's answer is correct. I suppose it depends on how important it is for you to be correct.

Broadway, are you saying that search engines wouldn't truncate the word? I rely much more on organic traffic than search results, so I don't know the answer to that. But I'd be kind of surprised to learn that search engines look at only stand-alone words (although I know it's a problem with spellchecking).

[Edited because I still haven't quite learned to spell "Syzygy" correctly ;) .]

[edited by: Beagle at 10:39 pm (utc) on Oct. 25, 2006]

I made my decision based on the fact that I really don't know how the search engines handle this situation. With each year that goes by search engines do become more sophisticated. Possibly this is a non-issue. But since I do specifically know how a search engine will handle the keyword if they are separated by a space, I've chosen the sure thing.

In the HTML the TM should be encoded as one of the following character entities...

™
™
™

...so Google won't see the letters TM. They all seem to work cross browser, though I'm not sure which is best supported pre ie6.

If you want to play it safe and add the space to ensure that Google sees the keyword, you can get rid of the space using CSS. The HTML would be:

Trademark <span id="TM">&trade;</span>

and the CSS would be:

span#TM{
margin-left: -0.25em;
margin-right: -0.25em;
}

The "margin-left" pulls the TM a few pixels to the left so it doesn't look like there's a space, when in fact there is. The "margin-right" pulls the next word in the sentence back so there's no extra space between the TM and the next word. I used em instead of px so this will scale properly.

I should add that the ™ symbol is its own character and not the letters TM, so this is probably a non-issue anyway. If you Google ™ nothing comes up.

The trademark symbol only needs to affixed to the first use of the term on the page.

You could talk write about Kleenex(TM) in the first paragraph and then just call it Kleenex after that.

Happy trademark, happy search results.

In an editorial context it is not necessary to use ™ at all.

Syzygy

In an editorial context it is not necessary to use ™ at all.

I deal with one particular manufacturer that is absolutely bonkers over their trademarks. They must see it everywhere with no space or they just go ape sh*t. I was afraid that it might mess with my serp positioning but I can't say that it has.

I used to subscribe to Writer's Digest, and every once in awhile they'll run an issue with ads from just about any company you can think of, reminding writers to not only use the ™ symbol but also the type of product. I suppose the purpose is to make it obvious that the brand is just a name: "As she wept, he handed her a Kleenex™ facial tissue."

I suppose it's a good way for the magazine to sell a lot of ads. ;)

[edited by: Beagle at 9:19 pm (utc) on Nov. 16, 2006]