How to report trademark infringement in Google Ads

Google’s trademark complaint process exists for one specific thing: a direct competitor using your trademark inside the ad text itself, in a way that’s confusing, deceptive, or misleading. That’s a narrow target, and most of the “infringement” people spot on their brand terms doesn’t actually meet it. File a complaint that doesn’t qualify and you’ve spent the goodwill of a formal process on nothing — so rule the edge cases out first.

• The mark must appear in the ad’s own copy — the headline or the description. Google is explicit that the trademark “must be used in the ad, not only on the ad’s landing page,” so a landing page that mentions your brand is not, by itself, reportable through this process. (A competitor claiming your brand as their displayed business name is handled separately, under Google’s business-information and brand-verification rules, not this trademark complaint.)
• Bidding on your brand as a keyword is not reportable. It’s the single most common thing people try to report, and Google won’t act on it — the keyword and the ad text are different questions under the policy.
• Your mark sitting in the second-level domain of the display URL is not reportable either. Google carves this out specifically, so a competitor’s display URL that happens to include your brand name in that position doesn’t qualify on its own.
• Rule out legitimate uses before you file. Resellers or sellers of components and compatible products are allowed to use your mark if their landing page is primarily dedicated to selling that product, shows prices or other commercial information, and makes clear it’s a reseller or informational site rather than you. Informational or index sites about your product, and ordinary descriptive use of a word that happens to match your mark, are also outside the policy.

If what you’re looking at fails all four of those checks — the mark isn’t in the ad copy, it’s only a keyword, it’s only in the domain, or it’s a legitimate reseller — you don’t have a trademark complaint. You may still have a case for our companion guide on keyword bidding versus ad-copy misuse, but not this process.

A formal complaint isn’t always the fastest route to the ad coming down. Some infringement is a small affiliate or reseller who doesn’t realise their copy crosses a line, not a competitor deliberately baiting your traffic. A direct message or a cease-and-desist from counsel can resolve that in days, while a formal complaint has no published timeline at all.

That said, contacting the advertiser is optional, not a prerequisite — Google’s process doesn’t require you to try that first, and there’s no reason to tip off a competitor who’s knowingly and repeatedly misusing your mark. Use your judgement: reach out when the misuse looks accidental or low-stakes, and go straight to Google when it looks deliberate, repeated, or damaging enough that you want the formal record regardless.

Google only accepts trademark complaints against specific advertisers, identified by their URL, and only in the countries and industries where you’ve demonstrated trademark rights. That means a vague “someone is using my brand” report won’t get anywhere — you need the exact advertiser and proof of where you actually hold the mark. Put this together before you open the complaint form so you’re not filing partway and hunting for details.

• For each trademark you’re asserting: the country or countries where it’s registered, and the registration number — or, if it isn’t registered, a link to evidence of your rights to use it.
• The specific advertiser’s URL, not just their business name — Google identifies complaints against advertisers by URL, so pin down exactly which domain is running the ad.
• A dated screenshot of the ad itself, showing the headline and description text where your mark appears.
• A dated screenshot of the search query and location that triggered it, so there’s a clear record of what was actually shown and where.
• If someone else is filing on your behalf — an agency or outside counsel — a signed authorisation letter. Keep it unconditional: a letter that hedges or limits their authority can undercut the complaint’s scope.

This is a rights-holder-only process, separate from the general ‘Report an ad’ flow anyone can use for an ad that looks broken or inappropriate. If you try to raise a trademark issue through the general flow, it won’t reach the team that handles trademark rights. The steps below get you to the right one.

1. Start from Google’s ‘Google Ads complaints and feedback’ page and look for the trademark issues section — that’s the entry point into the rights-holder process, distinct from reporting an individual ad as an ordinary user.
2. From there, you can also reach the trademark route through the ‘Report Content on Google’ troubleshooter or the Google Ads Trademark Troubleshooter, both of which route trademark questions to the same underlying process.
3. Open the formal trademark complaint form and confirm you’re filing as the trademark owner, or as someone authorised to act on the owner’s behalf with the letter ready to attach.
4. Enter the registration details for each mark you’re asserting — country and registration number, or your link to evidence of use rights if it isn’t registered.
5. Identify the specific advertiser by URL. If more than one advertiser is misusing your mark, expect to document each one — the complaint is evaluated against specific advertisers, not a general sweep of your brand term.
6. Attach your dated evidence: the ad text, the query that triggered it, and the location it was seen in.
7. Submit the complaint and keep your own copy of everything you sent, including the exact date. There’s no confirmation timeline, so your own record is what you’ll refer back to if you need to follow up.

Google doesn’t publish a review timeline anywhere, and it varies by case — don’t plan around a specific number of days or weeks, and be wary of anyone who quotes you one. Set expectations with your own team accordingly: this is a process you check back on, not one with a due date.

• If Google upholds the complaint and restricts the advertiser’s use of your mark, that restriction generally applies on an ongoing basis to any ads using the same second-level domain in their final URL — so it isn’t a one-time takedown of a single ad, it follows that domain going forward.
• Google issues a warning at least seven days before it would suspend an advertiser’s account over trademark violations, giving the advertiser a chance to fix the ad before losing the account entirely.
• An advertiser who disagrees with a restriction can appeal it through notifications attached to their restricted ads, so a successful complaint isn’t necessarily the end of the matter on their side.
• If a new advertiser starts misusing your mark later, or the same one returns with a different domain, that’s a new complaint — the restriction doesn’t automatically extend to unrelated URLs.

This entire process depends on catching the misuse in the first place, with the ad text, query, and date already documented before you ever open the complaint form. Building that evidence-gathering habit — rather than searching your brand term by hand and hoping to spot the right ad on the right day — is what makes filing straightforward when the time comes.