A competitor is using your brand name in their ad copy

Google draws a hard line between two things that feel identical from where you sit. A competitor bidding on your brand name as a keyword is allowed, and there is no setting that stops it. A competitor putting your trademark inside the ad copy itself — the headline or the description — is not, and Google will investigate it if you report it. (A competitor claiming your brand as their displayed business name is also actionable, but through Google’s separate business-information and brand-verification rules rather than this trademark process.)

That distinction is not a technicality. Google’s own policy is explicit that trademark use as a keyword, and in the second-level domain of the display URL, will not be restricted. What gets investigated is the trademark appearing in the ad’s visible text. So this is the one shape of brand-bidding complaint that has a real mechanism behind it, rather than a request Google has no lever to act on.

It also means the fix is narrower than it feels. You’re not trying to get a competitor removed from your auction — you can’t, and reporting the ad text won’t achieve that either. You’re asking Google to stop them running a specific ad that misuses your mark. Set your expectations there before you file anything.

The test Google applies is simple to state and easy to get wrong in practice: the trademark has to be in the ad, not only on the landing page it points to. An ad that never mentions your name but sends traffic to a page that does isn’t a text violation, even if the intent feels the same to you.

• Your brand name appears in the headline or description text of their ad — a clear violation, and the core of what this trademark complaint route covers.
• Your brand name appears as their business name — the advertiser identity shown with the ad — which is also actionable and often the easiest to point to, though Google handles the business name under its separate business-information and brand-verification rules rather than this trademark process. The display URL is different again: Google permits your mark in the second-level domain there, so that alone isn’t what you report.
• The ad implies affiliation, endorsement, or that they are you, without that being true — a violation even if your exact wordmark isn’t used.
• Your brand name appears only on their landing page, not in the ad text itself — not what this complaint route is for.

There are also legitimate uses that will not get actioned, and it’s worth ruling these out before you spend time filing. Authorised resellers, distributors, or sellers of compatible parts can reference your brand where their landing page is genuinely dedicated to selling or facilitating the sale of your product. Comparison sites and informational pages that describe your product accurately are treated the same way. And a term used in its ordinary descriptive sense — where your brand name also happens to be a common word — isn’t a trademark violation just because the word matches.

So before you file: check whether this is actually a reseller or affiliate you’ve authorised, or one operating within terms your channel programme allows. That’s a commercial conversation, not a trademark complaint, and filing one against a legitimate partner wastes your own credibility with Google.

A trademark complaint lives or dies on evidence. Google is being asked to act against another advertiser’s account, so vague description isn’t enough — you need the specific ad, tied to a specific advertiser, that you can point to.

• Search your exact brand term from an incognito window, set to the location where you saw the ad — screenshot the full results page, not just a crop of their ad.
• Capture the headline and description text exactly as shown, including any truncation, so the trademark use is unambiguous in the screenshot itself.
• Note the business name shown with the ad — that is a separate violation point from the headline and description. Record the display URL too as context, but remember it is the business name, not the domain, that carries the violation.
• Click through once to record the destination URL and the advertiser’s domain, since the complaint needs to identify the advertiser by URL.
• Record the date, time, and search query that triggered the ad, and repeat the check on a different day if you can — a one-off appearance and a running campaign are different problems.

Use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool rather than repeated live searches where you can, so you’re not inflating their impression count or paying to trigger your own competitors’ ads. Keep the screenshots and URLs together in one place — you’ll need to attach or describe them when you file.

Trademark complaints to Google Ads are submitted by the trademark owner or someone authorised to act on their behalf — not by any advertiser who happens to notice the ad. If your brand isn’t a registered trademark, having one in progress or relying on established common-law rights in your market still matters here, so involve whoever manages your trademark filings if you’re not sure of your status.

Google’s process is a dedicated trademark complaint channel, separate from general ad-quality reporting, and it asks you to identify the infringing advertiser by URL along with the specifics of your trademark rights. In practice that means going in with exactly what the documentation step above gave you: the advertiser’s URL, the exact ad text, and evidence of when and where you saw it, plus your basis for owning the mark.

Keep the description of what happened factual and specific to the ad text — this is not the place to also argue about their keyword targeting or bidding strategy, since that half of the complaint has no policy to act on. The stronger your complaint isolates the actual violation, the less back-and-forth it takes to get a decision.

Google reviews trademark complaints manually, and a decision on a specific ad doesn’t give you a standing rule against that advertiser everywhere. Enforcement is scoped to the countries and industries where you’ve demonstrated trademark rights, and to the specific advertiser and ad identified — it isn’t a blanket ban that follows your name across every market or every account they might run.

• Expect the outcome to apply to the ad and advertiser you reported, not automatically to every ad from every affiliate or reseller in their network.
• If your brand operates in multiple countries, a violation actioned in one market doesn’t necessarily clear it in another — file where you have rights and where the ad actually ran.
• Re-offence is common enough to plan for. The same advertiser can return with reworded copy that avoids your exact wordmark, or a new domain, which is a new violation to document rather than a breach of the old decision.

That last point is the real cost of this process: it’s reactive by design, and it only works if you actually see the ad. Most brand owners find out from a customer, or from stumbling onto it themselves, well after the ad has been running. Continuous monitoring of your brand terms closes that gap — it catches the ad the moment it appears, with the screenshot and timestamp already captured, so you’re filing a complaint on day one instead of after weeks of exposure you never knew about.