Competitor bidding on your brand name

A customer emails you a screenshot. They searched your company name, and the first thing Google showed them was a rival's ad offering 20% off. Your organic listing sits underneath. You feel robbed, you want it gone today, and you have no idea whether it's even allowed.

It is allowed. What matters is how much it costs you, and that part you can measure.

Short answer: A competitor bidding on your brand name in Google Ads is usually allowed, because Google's trademark policy does not restrict trademarks as keywords. Confirm it with Auction Insights on a brand-only campaign. Defend with your own brand campaign when the rival takes real clicks, and complain to Google only when your trademark shows up in their ad text.

The takeaways

• Google's trademark policy states that using trademarks as keywords is not restricted, so a complaint only works when your trademark appears in the competitor's ad text.
• A rival on your brand terms costs you twice: the clicks they take, and the higher CPC you pay to stay above them in your own auction.
• A brand campaign's ROAS is the most flattering number in the account, so judge the defense by an on/off test of the clicks you would lose without it.

Is it legal for a competitor to bid on your brand name?

In most cases, yes. Google's trademark policy says plainly that using trademarks as keywords is not restricted in Google Ads. What the policy restricts is a trademark used in the ad itself by a direct competitor, or used in a confusing or misleading way.

So the line runs through the ad text. A rival who buys "yourbrand" as a keyword and runs a generic ad is playing by the rules. A rival whose headline reads "Yourbrand alternative, 20% cheaper" is the case you can report, as the trademark owner, through Google's complaint process.

Local trademark law can go further than Google's policy, and EU courts have ruled on this exact question. If the ad implies they are you, that is a conversation for a lawyer. This post is not legal advice.

How do you confirm a competitor is bidding on your brand terms?

Run Auction Insights on a campaign that contains only your brand keywords. If your brand terms sit mixed into a generic campaign, the report blends both, and you can't tell whether a rival shows up on your name or on a category term like "project management software".

On a clean brand campaign, any domain listed with impression share is entering auctions for your name. The estimate-spend post covers how to read impression share honestly, including the catch that Google hides competitors below 10%.

Then look at what they say. Search the competitor in the Google Ads Transparency Center and read their live text ads. You will not see which keywords they bought, but you will see whether your name appears in a headline, and whether the ad leans on a discount, a comparison, or a "switch from" angle.

Searching your own name in a browser tells you less than it seems, because ad serving varies by location, time and device. Google's Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool shows the results page without registering an impression.

What does it cost you when a rival sits on your brand?

Two things, and the second one is easy to miss.

The first is stolen clicks. Some people who typed your name were ready to buy from you and clicked the rival instead. Brand searchers are the warmest traffic you have, so even a small share hurts.

The second is your own CPC. In a Google auction, you pay roughly what it takes to keep your ad rank above the next advertiser. With no one else bidding, your brand clicks are cheap. Once a rival enters, the advertiser below you is suddenly a real competitor, and your price per brand click rises to match. Your brand campaign's CPC trend is often the first place an invasion shows up, before anyone sends a screenshot.

I would watch both. Rising brand CPC with flat brand conversions means you are paying more to keep the same customers.

Should you defend with your own brand campaign?

Usually, yes, when a competitor is present. With a rival above your organic listing, your brand ad is the only thing keeping your name first on the page. Brand keywords are highly relevant to your own site, so you can typically hold the top spot for less than a stranger pays to sit there.

The trap is the reporting. Brand campaigns show the best ROAS in almost every account, because most of those buyers would have found you anyway through the organic link. That number says nothing about whether the defense is earning its keep.

So test it. Pause the brand campaign for a week or two in one region (or alternate weeks) and compare total brand-search conversions, paid plus organic, against the period with the ad on. If the rival is present and your total drops, the campaign is buying you real customers. If nothing moves, keep a low budget running and spend the difference somewhere it does more.

When no competitor shows up in Auction Insights at all, the honest answer is often to keep brand spend minimal and check monthly.

Can you get them to stop?

Sometimes. Some businesses agree informally not to bid on each other's names, and a polite message to the rival's marketing team costs nothing. If your trademark appears in their ad copy, file the complaint. If neither applies, make their clicks expensive by holding your own position and making your ad the better answer to a search for your name.

Watching what a rival runs, as opposed to the auctions they enter, is where my own tool helps. Adscalr reads competitor ads from the Google Ads Transparency Center daily, alongside Meta's and TikTok's libraries, so a new "switch from you" angle shows up in your competitor intelligence feed. It does not monitor search auctions or your brand results page. For that part, Auction Insights on a clean brand campaign is still the tool.