Round the edgesRound the edges

You've searched for Yourbrand on Google. Your own ad is at the top and nothing else looks unfamiliar. A shopper with a full basket types “yourbrand voucher code” instead, and gets a different set of ads. Two extra words have moved the action.

Most brand checks look at the bare name, the search your team types. The searches round its edges, with “discount code”, “voucher code” or “promo code” added, are auctions of their own, and an ad can be eligible there while it's kept off the bare name.

One negative keyword

A negative keyword tells Google not to show an ad on a search. Negatives have match types like ordinary keywords, and the strictest is negative exact. It blocks a search only if it has the same words, in the same order, with nothing added.

So an affiliate's campaign can hold the keyword [yourbrand discount code] and the negative exact keyword [yourbrand]. Square brackets are how Google Ads writes exact match. A search for “yourbrand” matches the negative, so the ad isn't shown. A search for “yourbrand discount code” has words added, so the negative doesn't apply and the ad stays eligible.

The very search you use to check the programme becomes the one their ad avoids. It takes two lines in a keyword list.

Exact match isn't literal

Google's exact match shows ads on searches with “the same meaning or same intent as the keyword”. These close variants apply to every match type, and they can't be switched off. They include misspellings, plurals, reordered words, synonyms and paraphrases.

So [yourbrand discount code] also reaches “yourbrand discount codes”, “yourbrnad discount code” and “discount code for yourbrand”. It can reach “yourbrand voucher code” or “yourbrand promo code” too, when Google judges they mean the same. That's Google's call on each search, not the advertiser's.

Negatives are stricter. Google says they don't match close variants, though they now account for casing and misspellings. Plurals and synonyms still have to be added by hand. The guide to negative keywords for affiliates has the list to ask for.

Your own campaign is no different. Phrase match covers searches that include the keyword's meaning (broad match modifier was folded into it by July 2021), so your phrase "yourbrand" usually enters the code searches. Your exact [yourbrand] usually doesn't, because the extra words change the meaning.

One more edge. In AI Max, Dynamic Search Ads and Performance Max, an ad can match with no keyword at all. Then the {keyword} ValueTrack parameter, the value Google can pass into a tracking link, comes back blank, and so does any click reference built from it.

Why your reports miss it

Auction Insights, the Google Ads report that lists the other advertisers in your auctions, only compares you with advertisers in auctions you also entered. If your campaigns don't enter the code searches, it can't show you who does. Watching the bare brand more carefully won't fill that gap.

Ad Preview and Diagnosis shows the same results as a real search, for a location you set, without counting impressions. But it only shows the search you type, so a check of the bare name shows the bare name.

In your network's report, a voucher partner on orders that used a code looks normal. The transaction says nothing about the search that came first, unless the publisher put it in the click reference.

The checkout detour

A code search can start at your checkout. A shopper notices the empty discount field, leaves to hunt for a code, and returns through an affiliate link. In published checkout usability testing, shoppers who saw a coupon field did just that, and those who left to hunt were much less likely to come back.

Nobody has measured what share of brand plus code searches start at a checkout. Treat this as one way it can happen, not a claim about how often.

In many programmes the last eligible click before the sale takes the commission (How a sale gets credited has the mechanics). So a review site's click at 14:02 can find the shopper, and a voucher site's click at 19:41 can take the credit. The basket hasn't changed.

What it costs

The commission on the code visit lands on a sale already in progress, on top of whatever you'd spent to bring the shopper in.

Imagine three hundred orders a month take that route. That's £1,200 of commission on baskets already filled, and any partner whose click came first earns nothing for them. The guide to working out the cost builds the same kind of sum from your own numbers.

The useful question is what the code visit added to that journey. Shoppers who leave to hunt are less likely to return, so a code page that brings one back may have kept the sale. Sometimes it added little.

Where it shows in your own records

• Google Ads: Auction Insights for any campaign or ad group of yours that enters the code searches. An exact keyword on the bare name stays quiet.
• GA4: sessions from google / cpc with campaign (not set). That's how GA4 files a click from a Google Ads account not linked to your property, and Google's help suggests checking for other accounts advertising your site.
• Your network: transactions that used your welcome or public codes, the time from click to sale, and the click reference.
• Your order data: the code on each order, matched to the network's order reference.

The ordinary explanations

• An approved voucher or cashback partner whose terms allow code searches, or never mentioned them. Many terms list only the bare brand.
• A partner following your terms to the letter. If they say “add the brand as a negative keyword”, a negative exact [yourbrand] does just that.
• A broad or phrase match keyword reaching code searches through close variants, with nobody aiming at them.
• A Performance Max or AI Max campaign matching without a keyword.
• Your own agency, a reseller, or another team at your company.
• Terms that never reached a publisher, or a sub-network's publisher who didn't know them (Behind the network).
• An old campaign still running.

What to do

1. In Ad Preview and Diagnosis, set the location to the United Kingdom and choose a device. Type each code search, then its plurals and your customers' usual misspellings.
2. For each ad you don't recognise, record the date and time, the search, the device and location, the headline, text and display URL, and the advertiser Google names in “About this advertiser”.
3. Compare that with your own records: your agency's accounts, your approved publishers, and what each one's terms allow.
4. In your network's transactions for the last 30 days, filter to orders that used your welcome or public codes. Sort by click to sale, and read the click references.
5. To see who competes there, give the code searches a phrase match ad group of your own for a few weeks, with a budget set against the sales you want from them. Then read its Auction Insights.
6. Write the permitted brand combinations into your terms: the brand, its misspellings, and the brand with any other term, code searches included. Say “bid on or appear on”, and require negatives that match, plurals and synonyms written out. What you can do has the clauses.

Trade marks and Google's rules

A trade mark complaint won't remove the keyword targeting: Google doesn't restrict trade marks as keywords. It may restrict the mark in ad text, but not on pages that mainly give information about the brand, or an index of search results about it. So a voucher page may keep your name in its ad text even after a complaint.

The courts ask whether a reasonably attentive user can tell whose goods an ad offers. An ad that leads to your own shop sells your own goods, so trade mark law is usually a weak tool here. Your programme terms are the lever. Google's Unfair advantage policy lists “affiliates that advertise on Google Ads against the applicable affiliate program rules”, so whether it applies depends on what your terms say about code searches.

Seeing it in Godotoro

Godotoro searches google.co.uk from UK addresses in desktop browsers and records every ad as it showed, without clicking. For brands on its schedule, it searches the bare name and “discount code” every four hours from 00:00 to 20:00 London time, and “voucher code” and “promo code” weekly.

Each search keeps its own bidders. Who's bidding shows each advertiser per search: the checks it was seen in, its position, first and last seen, its distinct ads and the advertiser Google names. One seen on “discount code” and never on the bare name stands out.

The codes pane shows which of 15 coupon extensions and voucher sites list each code, masked to its first letters and length, with providers and dates together. It describes what was seen; what that means under your terms is yours to decide. To see your own searches, check your brand.