Advice: Ride the Boards! or Yahoo! Displaying Wrong Info

[blitzen]

Boy, am I ever busy trying to keep all those big boys in line lately. I've gotten a bit pro-active in getting these search engines and directories and everyone else to straighten up their act and correctly portray my company and products.

RE: Overture. My company name is a registered trademark. So, I had to use the ® in the Overture listings to keep my trademark strong.

I tried the ® and ® and (R), but they were eventually stripped out by Overture. They placed a space between my mark and the (R) before totally removing the registered trademark symbol. I had to phone them to change my trademark to display properly. I haven't had time yet to look at my listings since because I'm not putting in funds until they transfer me to their spiffy new platform.

RE: Product Submit. I just reviewed my listings there.
First, they are listing my registered trademark as
MyMark® ("MyMark" is fictional, I think). That's right, they're showing on the page the ®, not the ® or (R). I just wrote to them to fix that.

Second, the products I inspected were the outdoor fountains. There's a link right there, IN my paid listing to Ralph Lauren stuff. What in tarnation is Ralph Lauren doing in my listing? If you know that brand, it's polo shirts! I don't have "Ralph" or "Lauren" anywhere in the datafile that I submit.

When I was in a hurry and first submitted to Product Submit, I let them decide the categories (testing them). They put pond liners in the toys section! I wish it would be flawless process. It'd be so cool if they could automatically decide for me. I guess I have to be "The Decider".

Has anyone else had problems with this sort of stuff? Can I invoice them for my work to fix their shortcomings?

In marketing class they teach you to "ride the boards". That is, after your billboards are completed, you hop in your car and take a ride to inspect them. (Wish it were snowboards or surfboards.).

That is true for Internet advertising whether or not your paying for the ads. Things can certainly run amuck if you're not on top of it.