What you can (and can’t) stop when competitors target your brand
In Google Ads, “protecting your brand” usually means two different things: defending the search results page so you keep the top positions on your own brand terms, and preventing competitors from using your brand in their ad copy in ways that confuse customers.
The hard truth is that you generally can’t stop a competitor from bidding on your brand name as a keyword. Brand-term bidding is part of how the ad auction works. What you can control is whether you consistently show above them, how much you pay to do it, and whether their ads cross the line by using your trademark in the ad itself in a confusing or misleading way.
That mindset shift matters, because the best “brand protection” is usually a combination of (1) clean campaign structure that keeps brand traffic where you want it, (2) strong Ad Rank so you win the auction efficiently, and (3) monitoring plus escalation paths when competitors violate policy.
The most common competitor tactics you’re defending against
Competitors typically show up on your brand searches in a few predictable ways: they bid directly on your brand terms, they run generic campaigns that match to your brand queries, they rely on automated campaign types that expand into branded traffic, or they imply affiliation (“official,” “authorized,” “partner”) to siphon high-intent clicks.
Your defense strategy should be designed to handle all four—not just “bid more.”
Build a brand campaign setup that’s hard for competitors (and your own automation) to disrupt
The biggest self-inflicted wound I see is when brand traffic leaks into the wrong campaigns. When that happens, your reporting gets messy, your bidding becomes inconsistent, and competitors suddenly look “stronger” than they really are because you’re not defending cleanly.
1) Separate brand from non-brand intentionally (and use brand controls where they help)
Start with a dedicated brand Search campaign that is only responsible for branded demand. Then keep your non-brand Search campaigns focused on category, product, and solution intent. This gives you one place to manage budgets, targets, landing pages, and ad messaging specifically for brand defense.
If you want an extra layer of control, use brand inclusions on your brand Search campaign so it only serves for queries associated with the brand(s) you select. This is especially useful if you have a short brand name that overlaps with generic words, or if broad match expansion has historically pulled your brand campaign into non-brand territory (or vice versa).
Important platform note for account maintenance: starting May 27, 2025, brand settings for Search campaigns began moving into the AI Max settings panel. If you’ve used brand settings before and can’t find them where you remember, this change is usually why.
2) Keep automated campaign types from “stealing” your branded searches
If you run automation-heavy campaigns (especially Performance Max), they can and will participate in branded searches unless you tell them not to. That can be fine in some accounts, but if your goal is brand defense and clean measurement, you usually want brand searches controlled by your brand Search campaign.
For Performance Max, you have multiple ways to prevent branded serving. In most cases, the best practice is to use campaign-level brand exclusions (via brand lists) rather than relying only on negative keywords. Brand exclusions are designed to block brand traffic more completely, including common misspellings, variants, and foreign-script versions of brand terms, which negative keywords do not cover as reliably.
If you manage multiple Performance Max campaigns, it’s also worth taking advantage of the newer workflow improvements that allow negative keyword management at scale (including the ability to use negative keyword lists at the campaign level), so your brand-safety and competitor-exclusion logic stays consistent as the account grows.
3) Use negatives surgically to stop competitor leakage—without crippling learning
Negative keywords are still valuable, but they should be used with intent. For brand defense, negatives are best used to keep campaigns in their lanes (brand vs. non-brand) and to block clearly irrelevant or brand-unsafe traffic. Overbuilding negatives can reduce reach and can limit automated bidding from finding converting queries you didn’t anticipate.
When you need a blunt instrument across the whole account, use account-level negative keywords. This is a practical way to block competitor brand names (or other unwanted queries) across Search and Shopping inventory in relevant campaign types—useful when you never want to pay for those clicks anywhere in the account.
- Quick diagnostic checklist: If competitors are showing above you, confirm whether your brand traffic is split across multiple campaigns (brand Search, Performance Max, Dynamic Search Ads, Shopping). Consolidate ownership of brand queries before you start “turning knobs” on bids.
- Quick hygiene checklist: Add your own brand as a negative (or brand exclusion) in campaigns where you don’t want brand traffic, so you’re not bidding against yourself and muddying the auction.
Win the brand auction efficiently: the levers that actually move competitor visibility
When a competitor bids on your brand, your goal is usually simple: show as often as possible in the most prominent positions, at a cost that makes sense. You do that by managing impression share, budget limits, and Ad Rank drivers (not just bids).
1) Manage the right impression share metrics (don’t guess)
Brand protection is one of the few use cases where impression share metrics are genuinely “boardroom useful.” Watch these like a hawk: Search impression share (coverage), Search top impression share (presence above organic results), and Search absolute top impression share (first position among top ads).
Then look at what’s holding you back: Search lost impression share (budget) tells you you’re running out of daily budget; Search lost impression share (rank) tells you Ad Rank is the issue (bid, ad relevance, landing page experience, or expected impact from assets).
2) Choose a bidding approach that matches your intent (defense vs. efficiency)
If your primary goal is to keep competitors from appearing above you, Target impression share is often the most direct tool—especially if leadership expects “we should always be visible on our own name.” You can set a target for top of page or absolute top, and you can apply a bid cap to avoid runaway CPCs. The key is not setting the cap so low that the strategy can’t compete; that’s a common reason brands accidentally “open the door” to conquesting ads.
If your goal is to maximize revenue or leads from branded demand (and you have strong conversion tracking), conversion-based Smart Bidding can work well on brand too. Just remember: competitors can increase CPC pressure on brand terms, and conversion-based strategies may accept lower impression share if the algorithm believes it can hit your efficiency targets without defending every auction. That’s not “wrong”—it’s just a different objective.
3) Improve Ad Rank the smart way: relevance and assets are your unfair advantage
Even if competitors bid aggressively, you can often outrank them at a lower effective cost by strengthening the quality signals the auction rewards. Tight brand keyword-to-ad alignment, clear “official” positioning, and strong landing page experience all help. Assets matter too: sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, image assets, and other eligible formats can improve expected performance and increase your ability to win higher positions.
This is also where many brands miss easy wins. A competitor’s conquest ad often looks generic, while your brand ad can be exceptionally specific. Use that. Mention the exact product line, the most compelling differentiator, the fastest path to support/sales, and the trust signals only the real brand can claim (shipping, warranty, returns, service hours, financing, etc.).
Monitoring and enforcement: how to respond when competitors push too far
Brand defense isn’t “set and forget.” Competitors test, copy changes, and rotate messaging. You need a light but consistent process to catch issues early.
1) Use Auction Insights to spot the real threats (not the loud ones)
Auction Insights is your reality check. Focus on overlap rate (how often they show when you show) and outranking share (how often you beat them when you’re in the same auctions). If a competitor has a high overlap rate but low outranking share, they’re probably wasting money. If they have rising outranking share, that’s a signal to review your lost IS (rank), assets, and bidding settings before it becomes a bigger problem.
If you run Performance Max, remember that auction insights can segment Search data by “Search” and “Shopping,” which helps you see whether the competitive pressure is coming from text ads, Shopping placements, or both.
2) Act fast on trademark misuse (ad text is the line that matters)
If a competitor is simply bidding on your brand keyword, that’s typically not something you can block directly. But if they are using your trademark in the ad in a way that creates confusion, deception, or misleading affiliation—especially as a direct competitor—that’s when you move from “optimization” to “enforcement.”
In those cases, document what you see (query, ad variation, date/time, screenshots) and proceed through the appropriate trademark complaint process so the platform can review whether use of the trademark in the ad should be restricted. This is also where you should watch for policy-adjacent behavior like impersonation or misrepresentation on the landing page (for example, pretending to be the brand, suggesting an official relationship, or obscuring who the advertiser is).
3) Protect your brand beyond Search results when it matters
If your brand campaigns include upper-funnel formats (Video, Demand Gen, Display, Performance Max), competitor adjacency can show up as placement issues rather than keyword issues. Use placement exclusions and suitability controls to avoid showing on competitor-controlled properties, questionable placements, or environments that dilute trust. These controls are especially relevant as brand suitability options have expanded across more inventory surfaces in recent platform updates.
4) The “90-minute brand defense tune-up” I’d do first in any account
- Confirm brand traffic ownership: one primary brand Search campaign, with automation (especially Performance Max) intentionally allowed or intentionally excluded from branded queries.
- Review impression share stack: Search IS, top IS, absolute top IS, plus lost IS (budget) and lost IS (rank).
- Check Auction Insights trends: overlap rate and outranking share for the top competitor(s) over the last 7–30 days.
- Audit brand ad assets: ensure the brand campaign is asset-rich and pointing to the best, most relevant brand landing pages.
- Escalate true violations: if competitors are using your trademark in ad text deceptively, prepare documentation and submit for review through the appropriate complaint path.
Let AI handle
the Google Ads grunt work
| Area | What it means in this post | Key actions / checks | Relevant Google Ads documentation |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you can and can’t stop when competitors target your brand | You generally can’t prevent competitors from bidding on your brand as a keyword. You can control how often and how high your ads show, how efficiently you win those auctions, and whether competitors are allowed to use your trademark in ad text in confusing or misleading ways. |
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| Common competitor tactics on your brand terms | Competitors can appear on branded searches by bidding directly on your brand, matching your brand via broad or generic keywords, letting automated campaign types (like Performance Max) expand into your brand, or implying official affiliation in ad copy or landing pages. |
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| Campaign structure: clean separation of brand vs. non‑brand | The post recommends a dedicated brand Search campaign that only handles branded demand, with separate non‑brand campaigns focused on generic, product, or solution intent. This keeps budgets, bidding, messaging, and reporting for brand traffic clean and defensible. |
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| Brand inclusions and brand settings (Search + AI Max) | Brand inclusions limit a Search campaign to only serve on queries associated with selected brands. The post highlights that from May 27, 2025, brand settings for Search campaigns are managed via the AI Max settings panel. |
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| Preventing Performance Max and other automation from “stealing” brand traffic | Automation‑heavy campaigns (especially Performance Max) can serve on branded queries unless you explicitly block or route that traffic. For clean brand measurement and defense, the post recommends keeping brand searches owned by your brand Search campaign. |
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| Negative keywords and account‑level controls | The post treats negatives as “surgical” tools to keep campaigns in their lanes and to block clearly irrelevant or brand‑unsafe traffic, warning against overbuilding negatives that can hurt learning. It specifically calls out account‑level negatives as a blunt instrument to block competitor brands or other queries across Search and Shopping. |
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| Quick diagnostics and hygiene for brand defense | Before changing bids, the post suggests checking whether brand traffic is fragmented across multiple campaigns and whether you are accidentally bidding against yourself on your own brand terms. |
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| Impression share metrics for brand protection | The post calls impression share one of the few “boardroom” metrics for brand defense, focusing on Search impression share, Search top impression share, and Search absolute top impression share, plus lost impression share due to budget or rank. |
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| Bidding strategy choice: defense vs. efficiency | The post contrasts Target impression share (for “always visible on our name” defense) with conversion‑based Smart Bidding (for maximizing value from brand demand). It notes that conversion‑based strategies may accept lower impression share if they can still hit efficiency targets. |
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| Ad Rank and creative advantage on brand terms | Even when competitors bid aggressively, you can usually outrank them by strengthening quality signals: keyword‑to‑ad relevance, clear “official” positioning, and strong landing page experience, supported by rich assets. |
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| Auction Insights for monitoring competitors | Auction Insights is positioned as the primary tool to see who actually competes with you on branded auctions and how often they outrank you. The post focuses on overlap rate and outranking share, and suggests segmenting by Search vs. Shopping for Performance Max. |
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| Trademark misuse in ad text and enforcement | The post explains that simply bidding on your brand is usually allowed, but using your trademark in ad text in a confusing or deceptive way—especially by a direct competitor—is where you move from optimization to enforcement. |
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| Protecting brand beyond Search (Video, Display, Demand Gen, Performance Max) | When using upper‑funnel formats, brand risk often shows up as placement and adjacency issues, not just keywords. The post recommends placement exclusions and brand suitability controls to avoid competitor‑controlled properties or low‑trust environments. |
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| 90‑minute brand defense tune‑up checklist | The post ends with a practical, short audit sequence to quickly strengthen brand defense in any account, starting with ownership of brand traffic and closing with escalation of genuine violations. |
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Let AI handle
the Google Ads grunt work
If protecting branded traffic is an ongoing battle—keeping brand and non-brand cleanly separated, stopping Performance Max from drifting into brand queries, watching impression share and Auction Insights, and catching misleading “official” competitor ads—Blobr can help by plugging directly into your Google Ads account and continuously turning these best-practice checks into concrete, prioritized actions you can review and apply on your terms. Its AI agents handle the repetitive monitoring and optimization work (for example, refining ad assets with the Headlines Enhancer or improving keyword-to-landing-page alignment with the Keyword Landing Optimizer), so you can stay on top of brand defense hygiene and escalate true trademark misuse when it actually crosses policy lines.
What you can (and can’t) stop when competitors target your brand
In Google Ads, “protecting your brand” usually means two different things: defending the search results page so you keep the top positions on your own brand terms, and preventing competitors from using your brand in their ad copy in ways that confuse customers.
The hard truth is that you generally can’t stop a competitor from bidding on your brand name as a keyword. Brand-term bidding is part of how the ad auction works. What you can control is whether you consistently show above them, how much you pay to do it, and whether their ads cross the line by using your trademark in the ad itself in a confusing or misleading way.
That mindset shift matters, because the best “brand protection” is usually a combination of (1) clean campaign structure that keeps brand traffic where you want it, (2) strong Ad Rank so you win the auction efficiently, and (3) monitoring plus escalation paths when competitors violate policy.
The most common competitor tactics you’re defending against
Competitors typically show up on your brand searches in a few predictable ways: they bid directly on your brand terms, they run generic campaigns that match to your brand queries, they rely on automated campaign types that expand into branded traffic, or they imply affiliation (“official,” “authorized,” “partner”) to siphon high-intent clicks.
Your defense strategy should be designed to handle all four—not just “bid more.”
Build a brand campaign setup that’s hard for competitors (and your own automation) to disrupt
The biggest self-inflicted wound I see is when brand traffic leaks into the wrong campaigns. When that happens, your reporting gets messy, your bidding becomes inconsistent, and competitors suddenly look “stronger” than they really are because you’re not defending cleanly.
1) Separate brand from non-brand intentionally (and use brand controls where they help)
Start with a dedicated brand Search campaign that is only responsible for branded demand. Then keep your non-brand Search campaigns focused on category, product, and solution intent. This gives you one place to manage budgets, targets, landing pages, and ad messaging specifically for brand defense.
If you want an extra layer of control, use brand inclusions on your brand Search campaign so it only serves for queries associated with the brand(s) you select. This is especially useful if you have a short brand name that overlaps with generic words, or if broad match expansion has historically pulled your brand campaign into non-brand territory (or vice versa).
Important platform note for account maintenance: starting May 27, 2025, brand settings for Search campaigns began moving into the AI Max settings panel. If you’ve used brand settings before and can’t find them where you remember, this change is usually why.
2) Keep automated campaign types from “stealing” your branded searches
If you run automation-heavy campaigns (especially Performance Max), they can and will participate in branded searches unless you tell them not to. That can be fine in some accounts, but if your goal is brand defense and clean measurement, you usually want brand searches controlled by your brand Search campaign.
For Performance Max, you have multiple ways to prevent branded serving. In most cases, the best practice is to use campaign-level brand exclusions (via brand lists) rather than relying only on negative keywords. Brand exclusions are designed to block brand traffic more completely, including common misspellings, variants, and foreign-script versions of brand terms, which negative keywords do not cover as reliably.
If you manage multiple Performance Max campaigns, it’s also worth taking advantage of the newer workflow improvements that allow negative keyword management at scale (including the ability to use negative keyword lists at the campaign level), so your brand-safety and competitor-exclusion logic stays consistent as the account grows.
3) Use negatives surgically to stop competitor leakage—without crippling learning
Negative keywords are still valuable, but they should be used with intent. For brand defense, negatives are best used to keep campaigns in their lanes (brand vs. non-brand) and to block clearly irrelevant or brand-unsafe traffic. Overbuilding negatives can reduce reach and can limit automated bidding from finding converting queries you didn’t anticipate.
When you need a blunt instrument across the whole account, use account-level negative keywords. This is a practical way to block competitor brand names (or other unwanted queries) across Search and Shopping inventory in relevant campaign types—useful when you never want to pay for those clicks anywhere in the account.
- Quick diagnostic checklist: If competitors are showing above you, confirm whether your brand traffic is split across multiple campaigns (brand Search, Performance Max, Dynamic Search Ads, Shopping). Consolidate ownership of brand queries before you start “turning knobs” on bids.
- Quick hygiene checklist: Add your own brand as a negative (or brand exclusion) in campaigns where you don’t want brand traffic, so you’re not bidding against yourself and muddying the auction.
Win the brand auction efficiently: the levers that actually move competitor visibility
When a competitor bids on your brand, your goal is usually simple: show as often as possible in the most prominent positions, at a cost that makes sense. You do that by managing impression share, budget limits, and Ad Rank drivers (not just bids).
1) Manage the right impression share metrics (don’t guess)
Brand protection is one of the few use cases where impression share metrics are genuinely “boardroom useful.” Watch these like a hawk: Search impression share (coverage), Search top impression share (presence above organic results), and Search absolute top impression share (first position among top ads).
Then look at what’s holding you back: Search lost impression share (budget) tells you you’re running out of daily budget; Search lost impression share (rank) tells you Ad Rank is the issue (bid, ad relevance, landing page experience, or expected impact from assets).
2) Choose a bidding approach that matches your intent (defense vs. efficiency)
If your primary goal is to keep competitors from appearing above you, Target impression share is often the most direct tool—especially if leadership expects “we should always be visible on our own name.” You can set a target for top of page or absolute top, and you can apply a bid cap to avoid runaway CPCs. The key is not setting the cap so low that the strategy can’t compete; that’s a common reason brands accidentally “open the door” to conquesting ads.
If your goal is to maximize revenue or leads from branded demand (and you have strong conversion tracking), conversion-based Smart Bidding can work well on brand too. Just remember: competitors can increase CPC pressure on brand terms, and conversion-based strategies may accept lower impression share if the algorithm believes it can hit your efficiency targets without defending every auction. That’s not “wrong”—it’s just a different objective.
3) Improve Ad Rank the smart way: relevance and assets are your unfair advantage
Even if competitors bid aggressively, you can often outrank them at a lower effective cost by strengthening the quality signals the auction rewards. Tight brand keyword-to-ad alignment, clear “official” positioning, and strong landing page experience all help. Assets matter too: sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, image assets, and other eligible formats can improve expected performance and increase your ability to win higher positions.
This is also where many brands miss easy wins. A competitor’s conquest ad often looks generic, while your brand ad can be exceptionally specific. Use that. Mention the exact product line, the most compelling differentiator, the fastest path to support/sales, and the trust signals only the real brand can claim (shipping, warranty, returns, service hours, financing, etc.).
Monitoring and enforcement: how to respond when competitors push too far
Brand defense isn’t “set and forget.” Competitors test, copy changes, and rotate messaging. You need a light but consistent process to catch issues early.
1) Use Auction Insights to spot the real threats (not the loud ones)
Auction Insights is your reality check. Focus on overlap rate (how often they show when you show) and outranking share (how often you beat them when you’re in the same auctions). If a competitor has a high overlap rate but low outranking share, they’re probably wasting money. If they have rising outranking share, that’s a signal to review your lost IS (rank), assets, and bidding settings before it becomes a bigger problem.
If you run Performance Max, remember that auction insights can segment Search data by “Search” and “Shopping,” which helps you see whether the competitive pressure is coming from text ads, Shopping placements, or both.
2) Act fast on trademark misuse (ad text is the line that matters)
If a competitor is simply bidding on your brand keyword, that’s typically not something you can block directly. But if they are using your trademark in the ad in a way that creates confusion, deception, or misleading affiliation—especially as a direct competitor—that’s when you move from “optimization” to “enforcement.”
In those cases, document what you see (query, ad variation, date/time, screenshots) and proceed through the appropriate trademark complaint process so the platform can review whether use of the trademark in the ad should be restricted. This is also where you should watch for policy-adjacent behavior like impersonation or misrepresentation on the landing page (for example, pretending to be the brand, suggesting an official relationship, or obscuring who the advertiser is).
3) Protect your brand beyond Search results when it matters
If your brand campaigns include upper-funnel formats (Video, Demand Gen, Display, Performance Max), competitor adjacency can show up as placement issues rather than keyword issues. Use placement exclusions and suitability controls to avoid showing on competitor-controlled properties, questionable placements, or environments that dilute trust. These controls are especially relevant as brand suitability options have expanded across more inventory surfaces in recent platform updates.
4) The “90-minute brand defense tune-up” I’d do first in any account
- Confirm brand traffic ownership: one primary brand Search campaign, with automation (especially Performance Max) intentionally allowed or intentionally excluded from branded queries.
- Review impression share stack: Search IS, top IS, absolute top IS, plus lost IS (budget) and lost IS (rank).
- Check Auction Insights trends: overlap rate and outranking share for the top competitor(s) over the last 7–30 days.
- Audit brand ad assets: ensure the brand campaign is asset-rich and pointing to the best, most relevant brand landing pages.
- Escalate true violations: if competitors are using your trademark in ad text deceptively, prepare documentation and submit for review through the appropriate complaint path.
