Brand search and your termsBrand search and your terms

Someone types “yourbrand” into Google. They aren't comparing shops or browsing a category. They've heard of you, or bought from you before, and they want your site. A search for your name is about as close to an order as a search gets.

That's why brand searches matter. Clicks on them usually cost less than clicks on generic searches and usually turn into orders more often, because the searcher has already decided. Those are tendencies, not rules: your own account will show how they hold for you.

It's also why other advertisers can want to be there, some with your agreement and some without. This lesson covers the searches, the auction, Google's policies and your terms.

The searches around your name

Brand search is a family of searches, and each can draw a different set of advertisers.

• The bare name: “yourbrand”, its misspellings (“yourbrnad”) and your web address typed as a search. Mostly people heading for your site.
• “yourbrand discount code”: someone close to buying, looking for a saving before they pay.
• “yourbrand voucher code” and “yourbrand promo code”: the same intent in other words.
• Plurals and longer forms: “yourbrand voucher codes”, “yourbrand discount”, and the brand with any other word.

The code searches deserve particular care. A shopper with a full basket can notice the empty discount field at your checkout, leave to search for a code and come back through whichever ad they click. If that click is an affiliate's, it can take the last click on a sale already under way. The guide to brand plus code searches covers how to count them and see who's there.

Which searches an ad reaches depends on match types, the settings for how closely a search must match a keyword. Exact match isn't literal: it covers close variants, searches Google judges to mean the same, and you can't switch that off. An advertiser can also bid on the code searches with your bare name as a negative exact keyword (one that stops its ad showing on exactly that search), so its ad never appears on the search you're most likely to check. Round the edges goes through that set-up.

How the auction prices your name

Every search runs an auction among the eligible ads. Google gives each ad an Ad Rank for that one auction, a score built from the bid, the quality of the ad and landing page, the context of the search and other factors. It decides whether the ad shows and where.

What you pay isn't your bid. Your actual CPC (cost per click) is the least needed to clear Google's Ad Rank thresholds and beat the Ad Rank of the ad immediately below yours, and ads further down can affect it too. It's often well under your maximum CPC bid.

On your own name your ad will often rank first, so your price is set largely by the advertiser below you. When another advertiser starts bidding on your name, that price can rise with nothing changed in your account. Same bid, same ad. A different ad below.

The numbers are made up, and real prices move with every auction. The point is that a price set by the ad below you can rise because of what someone else did.

Two ad locations, one ad per business in each

Since 14 April 2025, Google's limit of one ad for the same business, app or site applies to each ad location, not the whole page. The ads at the top of the results are chosen by a different auction from those lower down, and an advertiser that showed at the top can enter the bottom auction too.

Within each location, Google won't show several ads leading to the same or similar landing pages. The highest Ad Rank shows, and Google says this applies particularly to affiliate and reseller advertisers.

So an affiliate's ad whose final URL (the page a click lands on) is your shop leads to your business. If it wins the top auction, your own ad can be the one left out of the top, though it may still show at the bottom. Looks like yours follows this through to the commission and GA4.

Where the address on an ad comes from

The address shown on a search ad, its display URL, isn't typed in. Its domain is taken from the final URL. Only the display path after it (the /codes in yourbrand.example/codes) is editable text.

So an ad that lands on yourbrand.example shows yourbrand.example, whoever placed it. It really does lead to your shop. An affiliate's tracking sits in a separate field, the tracking template, which runs in the background. Only some clicks explains it.

What Google's policies cover, and what they don't

Trademarks. Google doesn't restrict trade marks used as keywords, or in the domain of a display URL. After a complaint, Google may restrict the mark in ad text, but only for specific advertisers you identify by URL, and the restriction then generally follows the domain in their final URL. Industry-wide complaints ended on 24 July 2023. Pages that sell your products, or mainly give information about them, can fall under the policy's exceptions.

Destination requirements. The display URL's domain must match the final URL's, the final URL mustn't redirect to another domain, and the tracking template must lead to the same content as the final URL. Templates set at account, campaign or ad group level must include {lpurl}, the placeholder Google fills with the final URL. An affiliate's ad that lands on your shop, with its network link in the template, can meet all three. A July 2026 change allows some cross-domain redirects with Google's prior approval, and it doesn't change the affiliate case.

Unfair advantage. This policy lists affiliates that advertise on Google Ads against the applicable affiliate programme rules, and Google warns at least seven days before suspending an account under it. This is where Google's rules meet yours, so your rules have to exist, be clear and have reached the advertiser.

Advertiser verification. Running ads on brand-related searches is one of the reasons Google may ask an advertiser to verify its identity. The verified name then shows in About this advertiser.

What programme terms usually say

Most affiliate programmes have a paid-search section, often called a PPC policy (pay per click, the way search ads are bought). It usually covers some of these:

• Brand bidding: none at all, or allowed for named partners under conditions you set.
• Bid on or appear on: affiliates may not bid on or appear on brand searches, so an ad that reaches them through broad match is covered too. The list covers misspellings and the brand plus any other term, “including but not limited to” those named.
• Brand plus code terms: “voucher code”, “discount code”, “promo code” and their plurals, often named outright.
• Negative keywords: your brand and its variants as a required negative across all paid search. Negatives don't cover plurals or synonyms on their own, so the clause names the variants.
• Direct linking: an ad whose click goes straight to your site, with the affiliate's tracking in the background, rather than to the publisher's own page. Terms often forbid it without permission, along with using your domain as the display URL.
• Trade marks: none in ad text, and often none in the publisher's own domain.
• Territories and hours: where and when an approved partner may run.
• Consequences: declined commission, suspension or removal.

Terms only work when everyone has them

A clause protects your name only if whoever runs the ad has it. Terms can miss:

• A publisher that joined before you added the paid-search section, and was never told.
• A sub-network's publishers. A sub-network joins as one publisher with its own publishers behind it, and they get your terms only if it passes them on. Behind the network covers this.
• Your own agency, or another team at your company, running campaigns from accounts you rarely see.
• A partner you once allowed to bid, under conditions that have since changed.

So date every version. Send the current one to your network and ask it to confirm every active publisher has it. Require sub-networks, in writing, to apply it to their publishers. Give your agency the same copy.

When an ad on your name surprises you, the explanation is usually ordinary: a partner you approved, your agency, a reseller, an old campaign, or terms that never reached someone. Aware, not accusing covers how to look and how to ask.

What to do this week

1. In Ad Preview and Diagnosis, search your bare name and the three code searches at a UK location, on computer and mobile. It adds no impressions.
2. Read your brand campaign's Search lost IS (rank), Top vs. other and average CPC by week for three months, beside your bid history.
3. List every domain in the campaign's Auction Insights, and mark the ones you know.
4. Search your brand name and domain in the Ads Transparency Center, region set to the United Kingdom, and note any advertiser you don't recognise.
5. Check your terms against the list above.

Seeing your brand searches in Godotoro

Godotoro searches google.co.uk from UK addresses in desktop browsers, records every ad as it showed and never clicks one. For brands on its schedule, it searches the bare name and “yourbrand discount code” every four hours by default, nights included, and the voucher and promo code searches weekly. Each search keeps its own bidders, with the advertiser Google names for each. What that means under your terms is for you to decide. You can check your brand for free.