What to Do When Competitors Bid on Your Brand Name?

Someone types your brand name into Google, and the first ad that appears belongs to your competitor. This is a common problem, especially for businesses that have gained some recognition in their industry. Under Google Ads policy, a competitor can target your brand name as a keyword — that's completely legal. They can't write your name in the ad copy, but they can use it as a search trigger. So blocking this entirely isn't possible. The real question is: what can you do about it?

Know This First: You Can't Stop Competitors, But You Can Get Ahead of Them

Google allows advertisers to use another brand's name as a keyword target. This policy applies in Turkey and everywhere else. You can file a complaint, but that only works when a competitor actually writes your brand name in their ad text. If they're simply using it as a search trigger, Google won't intervene. Accepting this reality and investing your energy in the right place — building your own brand campaign — is the smarter move.

The First Thing to Do: Launch Your Own Brand Campaign

Create a dedicated Google Ads campaign targeting only your brand name. This ensures that the first ad someone sees when searching for your brand belongs to you. This campaign also tends to have the lowest cost-per-click and highest conversion rate in your account — because the person searching already knows you. When competitors start bidding on your brand terms, your costs can rise, so don't postpone this campaign — run it permanently.

• Use Exact Match or Phrase Match: Broad Match in a brand campaign wastes your budget on irrelevant searches. With Exact Match, you show your ad only to people searching specifically for you.
• Try the Target Impression Share bid strategy: Aim for 90-95% visibility to make it harder for competitors to outrank you.
• Add Sitelink and Callout extensions: The more space your ad takes up, the further down competitors get pushed.
• Add your own brand name as a negative keyword in non-brand campaigns: This prevents double spending and keeps your reporting clean.
• Include common misspellings: Frequent misspellings of your brand name can be added to the campaign as well.

If You're Running Performance Max, There's One Extra Step

If you have a Performance Max (PMax) campaign in your account, it can also trigger on your own brand searches — creating budget overlap with your brand campaign. To prevent this, add a Brand Exclusions list to your PMax campaign. Since late 2024, this feature is available self-serve, meaning you can add it yourself without opening a support ticket. For newer campaigns using AI Max from 2025 onward, brand settings are managed directly in the AI Max panel.

The Most Practical Way to Track Competitor Ads

In the Google Ads interface, the Auction Insights report lets you see competition within your brand campaign. Filter the report specifically for your brand campaign. You'll be able to see which competitors appear most frequently, their top-of-page rates, and overlap rates. Note: Since an April 2025 policy update, the same advertiser can appear in multiple positions on the same search results page, so keep this in mind when interpreting Impression Share data. Reviewing this report once a month is enough.

Finally: Make Sure Clicks Land on You, Even If Someone Does Click

You can't fully stop competitors from bidding on your brand name. But when you set up your brand campaign correctly, even if a competitor ad appears on the page, you become the first click. On top of that, preparing a dedicated landing page focused on 'Why Us?' or 'Alternatives' can make a real difference: someone searching for your brand is already looking for you — the right message makes conversion much easier.