Do you mean to say that Chevrolet has never bought the AdWords phrase "Chevrolet"? I would be shocked to learn that.
We've considered seeking legal counsel. Part of the problem is that the two primary words of the business name are a generic service offered by this type of business (40 years ago SEO was not a big consideration). Also very few of our customers take the care to quote the two-word phrase, so their queries could plausibly be sent to the competitor which offers that service as well. This competitor has itself recently added the name of yet another lucrative related service to its name, presumably as an SEO measure.
That said, I'd be very eager to see any more advice you might have, or any links to resources you think might be helpful to us.
Ah. I was assuming that it was a situation like Ford buying AdWords for "Chevrolet". If it is more like Speedy Plumbing buying AdWords for "snake" and "plumbing" when your business is named Snake Plumbing, then I don't think you have much of a trademark case there.
In that case, businesses exist that can help your business search for and monitor more defensible trademarks. If you are truly hurt by competitors buying AdWords, you really should thrust your hand into the fire and suffer the pain of rebranding now, because it's only going to get worse the longer you wait. Switching from "Snake Plumbing" to "Jessaustin Pipewranglers" would hurt temporarily as you trained your existing customer base to use the new name, but uncommon or newly coined words are so much more defensible.
We've considered seeking legal counsel. Part of the problem is that the two primary words of the business name are a generic service offered by this type of business (40 years ago SEO was not a big consideration). Also very few of our customers take the care to quote the two-word phrase, so their queries could plausibly be sent to the competitor which offers that service as well. This competitor has itself recently added the name of yet another lucrative related service to its name, presumably as an SEO measure.
That said, I'd be very eager to see any more advice you might have, or any links to resources you think might be helpful to us.