What to Watch Out For When Using Competitors’ Names as Keywords in Google Ads

Depending on your particular industry, you face light, moderate, or high competition. The world of Google Ads is no different, and you’re most likely going to run into competitors who want to fight for a piece of that market share.

Some of your competitors could be old companies with well-established brands highly recognized by the public. If your business or product brand is not as recognized or popular, this situation could place you at a disadvantage regarding visibility and brand recognition towards your potential clients. So, let’s put things into perspective for you.

Small Brands In a Big Online World

Imagine you’re running a small boutique business selling hand-made gym wear, but you are facing huge competition from national brands like Lululemon, Gymshark, and Alo. You’ll probably feel outdone by these bigger companies, as they have more resources, marketing budgets, and brand name recognition.

But thanks to Google Ads, there’s a workaround, or shall we say a loophole: 

Have you considered using your competitor’s brand names as keywords in your campaign?

But is this legal? Does it go against any Google policy? It’s only natural to be concerned about its legitimacy. Still, according to Google’s current policy and our experience in practice, you’re safe to play the game, of course, with some certain boundaries.

“Google will not investigate or restrict the use of trademark terms in keywords, even if a trademark complaint is received.”

If you use well-recognized brand names as keywords for your campaign, your ad could appear whenever someone searches for custom gym clothes.

Keep An Eye Out for High Bounce Rates

Say you performed in-depth competitor keyword research and have developed an extensive list of brand names you would like to include in your list. Then, after a week, you notice they have a good CTR and a healthy number of clicks.

This might all seem great initially, but if you look at your Google Analytics and see very high bounce rates for those same keywords, this can actually hurt your campaign.

A high bounce rate could indicate that people who clicked on your ad expected to see products for the specific brand name they were initially searching for. Therefore, once they landed on your webpage, they were expecting to see products for that brand. Since they didn’t find what they were looking for, they just hit the back button and left.

Even though you got a click, you just spent good money and received bad traffic.

Always remember that while competitor’s keywords are part of your strategy and could be hurting your CTR, they also bring back ROI in compensation.

Pro tip: Use a separate asset group for branded terms to isolate for optimization strategy and metric measurement.

Don’t Include Your Competitor’s Name In Your Ads

Keep in mind that you don’t want to give your competitor’s brand name more publicity than what they are already getting and that you certainly don’t want to get into a legal fight over brand names and trademarks.

So word to the wise: DO NOT USE TRADEMARK BRAND NAMES IN YOUR AD COPY

On the headline of your ad, you could either use your own brand name or a generic description of your competitors’ brand products.

In a worst-case scenario, you could end up in trial due to manipulative marketing if you use another brand name in your ads. This can be perceived as you trying to trick the user into thinking that your website is your competitor’s website.

For example, if you use Lululemon in your keyword phrase and write Lululemon in your ad headline, users might think you’re Lululemon. This is manipulative and against the law in many countries. So, if you use your competitors’ names as keywords, do not use them in your headlines or with Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI).

Stay Away From DKI In Your Competitor Ad Copy

So far, you’ve:

• Refined your keyword list, which includes competitors’ names, and has created a winning strategy.
• You’ve created generic ads describing specific brand features and have been cautious about mentioning competitors’ names or their particular brand names in them.

This is great until you decide to include dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) in your ad copy within your competitor ad group (not applicable to Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns).

If we recall how dynamic keyword insertion works: it will basically takes any of your keywords matching the search query and fit the 25-character limit of the headline in your ad.

How Dynamic Keyword Insertion Works

For the last example, “Gym Clothes” goes in the headline because the keyword “100% cotton gym clothes” is too long to fit.

If you’re using dynamic keyword insertion, the headline of your ads could show your competitors’ brand names, which could be a big potential problem.

In the worst-case scenario, you could be involved in a lawsuit. So, it’s NEVER a good idea to use DKI for your ad groups with competitors’ names or brands included as keywords.

Even Google is cleaning their hands from any repercussions you may experience from using DKI’s:

“Keyword insertion and add new keywords recommendation: When applying recommended keywords from the add new keywords recommendation, you are responsible for ensuring that your ads are compliant with advertising policies after keywords are inserted.”

Use Keywords From Like-Minded Brands

When using competitors’ names as keywords, you want to ensure you’re not using brands farfetched from your business nature; you’ll want to consider your service/product and specific industry. If you’re a custom gym clothes shop, you don’t want to compete against a nationwide gym clothes retailer, as it won’t be a fair game.

So, How Do I Get Customers?

People looking for brand names of products with similar characteristics to yours could end up buying from you because they would like to try something different but within the same range of products.

Conversely, you should refrain from using competitor keywords that sell wholesale or have goals that target high-volume sales because their audience differs from what you would be looking for as a custom gym clothes shop. Your goals may vary and be targeted towards higher-ticket-priced products and repeat customers.

Don’t Get Us Wrong: Competitors’ Names Can Be Good Keywords, But Be Careful

Using your competitors’ names and brands to your campaign’s advantage is a good way to increase your potential conversions. Just follow best practices and strategies and continuously monitor the campaign’s behavior to ensure that your competitors’ keywords are working to improve your campaign results rather than hinder them.

Also, food for thought: remember that since your webpage most likely doesn’t have content related to your competitor’s brands, those keywords will likely have lower quality scores and higher CPCs.

Want professional help with how to put together competitor ad groups or asset groups within your Google Ads strategy? We’re here to help!