Competitor bidding on your name on Google: what the policy allows and what it restricts

A competitor buying your company name as a keyword on Google is not, in itself, breaking Google's trademark policy. The policy lists what "Google Ads and Display & Video 360 will not restrict:", and the list includes "Using trademarks as keywords". What it does restrict is something else: a direct competitor using your trademark in the text of its ad. Between the two sits a specific complaint route with specific conditions. This page sets them out, then deals with the real business question: whether defending your own name is worth the spend.

This is not legal advice. Anything touching whether you hold rights in a trademark is a question for your lawyer, not for your advertising agency.

The keyword and the ad are two different things

The whole situation comes down to one distinction. The keyword is invisible: it is the term the advertiser bids on. The ad is what the buyer sees on screen.

• On keywords, Google's policy is clear. Using trademarks as keywords is on the list of things Google does not restrict. Your competitor can bid on your name.
• On the ad, the policy restricts "Using trademarks in an ad from a direct competitor". The French version of the page adds that the trademark has to appear in the ad itself, not only on the landing page.

In practice: if a competing manufacturer from the South Shore shows up when someone types your name, with an ad about its own products, the policy gives you no grip. If its ad repeats your name or your trademark in its text, the situation changes.

Two limits worth knowing. The policy does not define what a "direct competitor" is. And nothing guarantees that your company name is a trademark in the sense the policy means. Both points should be settled with a lawyer before you build a strategy on them.

What can be reported, and on what conditions

Complaints go through Google's tool called Report Content On Google, which has an option to "Report a use of my trademark that is likely to cause confusion". Two conditions written into the policy decide what will be accepted.

• "Google will only accept complaints against specific advertisers identified on the basis of their URL(s)".
• They are accepted only "within the countries and industries in which trademark owners have demonstrated trademark rights".

What that means for you, without getting into the procedure: a vague complaint about "competitors using our name" will go nowhere. You need to know who, with which URL, and on what basis of rights. If your advertising supplier offers to "get a competitor taken down" without asking about your rights, he is promising something that does not depend on him.

When defending your own name is worth the spend

I found no official Google page that puts a figure on what a campaign on your own name returns. What follows is our reasoning, not a statistic.

Think about who types your company name. An existing customer looking for your number. A buyer a colleague told about you. An engineer who saw your booth at a trade show and wants to check. These people are looking for you specifically. A competitor showing up above your result offers them an alternative at the exact moment they were about to call you.

Defending your name makes sense when three conditions hold.

• Buyers really do search your name, not only your employees and suppliers.
• A competitor actually appears on those searches, regularly and not just once.
• Your organic result does not show what the buyer is after: the right number, the right page, the right division.

What to demand from a supplier before paying for your own name: that he shows you who actually appears on those searches, and how often. A supplier who recommends a campaign on your name to "protect the brand", without showing you a single competitor, is selling you insurance against a risk he has not demonstrated.

The same caution applies to the reverse question: bidding on a competitor's name. The policy allows it. But in a Quebec industrial market where buyers, suppliers and competitors meet at the same trade shows, what it costs in relationships can exceed what it brings in clicks. That is a leadership decision, not an account tactic.

Someone who types your name is already looking for you. The question is not whether to protect that search on principle. It is whether anyone is actually taking it from you.

When none of this applies

• Nobody searches your name. An SME that gets all its work from known prime contractors has no search volume to defend.
• No competitor shows up. Paying to be alone on your own name, when your organic result already sits on top and is complete, buys clicks you would most likely have had anyway.
• The problem is elsewhere. If a competitor's ad misleads buyers about who it is, that is no longer a bidding question. It is a question for your lawyer.

For the structure of an industrial search account, from keywords to landing pages, see Google Ads for manufacturers. I manage the ad accounts myself, with no account manager in between. The full advertising framework is on the Facebook and Meta advertising page.

Sources

• Google Ads Policy Help, "Trademarks (Google Ads and Display & Video 360)", https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6118 (French version, "Marques": https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6118?hl=fr), fetched 24 September 2026.
• Google, "Report Content On Google", https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905, fetched 24 September 2026.