Google Ads Trademark Policy 2026: Rules and Complaints

“Can we bid on a competitor’s brand?” gets argued in most paid teams at least once a quarter, usually with more folklore than facts. In practice there are two separate layers: Google Ads trademark policy, which is a platform rule, and trademark law, which is a national one. The platform allows some things and blocks others, and in 2026 that boundary matters more than it used to, because automation now writes ad copy on your behalf. This guide covers what is permitted in keywords, what is banned in ad text, how a rights holder complaint actually works, how authorization is granted, and what to do when your ads are already restricted.

Keywords and ad text are governed by different rules

The single most expensive misunderstanding in this topic: Google treats a trademark in your targeting differently from a trademark in your creative.

Keywords. Bidding on someone else’s brand term is generally not restricted by policy. The reasoning is that a user searching for a solution may legitimately be shown alternatives, provided the ad and the landing page are not misleading. A trademark complaint usually does not stop a competitor from bidding on the term — that is not what the mechanism does.

Ad text. Here the restriction is real. You cannot use another party’s trademark in headlines, descriptions, the display path or assets unless you fall into a documented exception or hold authorization from the owner. The usual penalty is not an account suspension: specific ads stop serving on queries containing that brand, or get disapproved under trademark use.

Your situation	Brand as a keyword	Brand inside ad text
Direct competitor	Generally allowed by policy	No
Authorized reseller	Allowed	Yes, with confirmed authorization
Review, comparison or informational site	Allowed	Yes, if the content is genuinely informational
Compatible product or accessory	Allowed	Yes, if the compatibility claim is truthful
Affiliate without documentation	Allowed	No — “we work with them” does not count

The exceptions, and what holds them together

There are only a few exceptions, and all of them rest on one principle: the user must not conclude they have reached the brand owner’s official site.

Authorized resellers and distributors. You genuinely sell the branded product, you hold written grounds for it, and the landing page shows the item with a price and a way to buy. Wording like “official site” is off limits without explicit permission, reseller or not.
Informational resources. Reviews, comparisons, knowledge bases, forums. The bar is that the content is really about the brand and useful to a reader, not a lead form wearing an article’s clothes.
Compatible goods and parts. Claims must be accurate: “fits model X”, never “original X”.
Partners with clear disclosure. Being in an affiliate program grants nothing by itself; the trademark owner has to authorize the usage.

The landing page is its own risk surface. A permitted brand mention in the ad will not save you if the destination reads like a clone of the official site — same logo treatment, same palette, same implied identity. Those requirements are unpacked in the guide to Google Ads destination requirements.

How a trademark complaint actually works

The owner files through a dedicated trademark form rather than standard account support, proving ownership of the mark and attaching examples of the offending ads. Google then weighs three things: whether ownership is established, whether the ad text really uses the mark, and whether a user could reasonably mistake the advertiser for the brand owner.

Enforcement is targeted. The action typically limits ad text, not the whole account and not the keyword. The campaign keeps running; those ads simply stop appearing on that brand’s queries.
A complaint is not permanent. Violations come back through new accounts, geographic rotation and timed tests. Monitoring has to be a recurring process, not a one-off cleanup.
Judgement is involved. Automation catches the obvious cases; contested ones go to manual review, which is why outcomes differ between advertisers who look similar from the outside.
Regions differ. EU rules impose stricter transparency expectations, so an ad clearing review in one market can be limited in another. Audit multi-market campaigns market by market.

Getting authorization without losing a month

This is where most time disappears. Google does not run an automated cross-account registry that a brand can tick you into. Confirmation flows from the rights holder and has to describe exactly who may say exactly what. Prepare the package in advance:

who is authorized — the legal entity and the specific Google Ads accounts that will serve the ads;
which phrases are approved — exact wording, not “mentions of the brand” in general;
which territories the permission covers;
the start date and duration;
supporting documentation: distribution agreement, partner contract, or a letter from the mark owner.

If you run several brands, keep a simple register: brand → account → approved phrasing → expiry. Six months later nobody remembers who signed what, and review will ask.

The rule that saves weeks: authorization attaches to a specific ad account and specific wording, not to “our agency” in the abstract. Anything not written down explicitly is treated as unauthorized when the ad is reviewed.

The economics nobody runs before launching

The legal argument is louder, but the arithmetic usually settles the question. Competitor-brand traffic behaves badly for three compounding reasons.

Lower relevance, higher cost. Your ad cannot contain the brand being searched, so text-to-query relevance is structurally worse than the brand owner’s. Weaker relevance means a higher price for the same position.

The owner is nearly always first. They match the query in copy, their landing page is exactly about that brand, and their click-through rate on their own name is excellent. You can outbid that; you will pay for the privilege.

The intent belongs to somebody else. The searcher wanted a specific company. A meaningful share of them will not consider alternatives at all, which drags click-to-lead conversion down and bounce rates up.

Metric	Your own brand campaign	Competitor-brand campaign
Cost per click	Usually the cheapest in the account	Clearly above account average
Click-through rate	High	Low — the searched name is missing from the ad
Click-to-conversion rate	High	Below non-brand in most verticals
Market reaction	None	A retaliatory campaign on your brand

These are directional patterns rather than benchmarks — the size of the gap depends on your category and brand strength. Judge such a campaign on incremental effect rather than reported CPA, and price in escalation: conquest campaigns get noticed, get answered, and end with both sides paying more for the same demand. That is not an argument never to run one; it is an argument to decide up front whether you are prepared to fund it for years.

Automation is the new source of violations

Violations used to be deliberate — someone typed a rival’s name into a headline. In 2026 a large share of them arrive through systems that write copy for you.

Automatically created assets. The system harvests phrasing from your landing page. If that page carries a comparison table full of competitor names, those names can surface in a headline, and you get restricted for text you never wrote.

AI Max and query expansion. Search campaigns increasingly select queries themselves and adapt headlines to them. Refresh the control settings in the breakdown of AI Max for Search before assuming your copy is static.

Performance Max and broad match. Campaigns drift onto brand queries — yours and other people’s. Brand lists and exclusions are the control surface; the mechanics are in the guide to brand lists and brand exclusions.

Dynamic insertion. Ad customizers and keyword insertion will happily place text you did not plan into a headline. A group containing competitor keywords plus insertion enabled is a violation waiting for its first impression. Review your asset inventory the same way you review ads — see the notes on RSA asset reporting for where to look.

Three situations where teams get caught

1. “But we are an official dealer”

A retailer sells a known brand, writes it in headlines, and gets restricted. The cause is rarely the dealer status itself — it is the absence of confirmation on the rights holder’s side. The platform does not know about your contract until the owner states who may say what. Fix: request authorization listing accounts and phrases, and in the meantime keep the brand in keywords and on the landing page only.

2. The comparison page that is not really a comparison

“X vs Y” with an honest table is a legitimate format, and informational mentions are allowed. Trouble starts when the same page is essentially a lead form with a competitor’s logo at the top. Test it the blunt way: look at the page as someone who searched for the competitor. If they could believe within three seconds that they landed on the official site, rebuild it.

3. Your own affiliates eating your brand

A brand owner watches CPC on their own name climb, goes hunting for competitors, and finds partners from their own program bidding on the brand and collecting commission on traffic that would have converted anyway. A trademark complaint helps only where the partner uses the mark in copy without permission; the real instrument is program terms plus enforcement. While you are in there, check that your own campaigns are not double-counting the same demand — duplicate conversions are common in this setup and inflate the report.

Your ads are already restricted: the recovery order

Find the exact reason. The ad status names the policy. “Trademark in ad text” and “misleading content” are different problems with different fixes.
Strip the brand from everywhere. Headlines, descriptions, display path, assets, asset names, automatically created assets, customizer feeds. Check all of them, not only the ones you remember writing.
Re-read the landing page. Sometimes the ad is fine and the destination is what implies official status.
Assemble evidence if you qualify for an exception. Reseller agreement, authorization confirmation, screenshots of the product page with pricing.
Resubmit for review. Appealing without changing anything nearly always returns the same verdict — edit first, appeal second.
Do not rebuild in a fresh account. Routing around an enforcement invites harsher action, and the copy meets the same review anyway.

Protecting your own brand

Monitor on a schedule. Check the SERP for your brand across geographies and devices, and read auction insights. A manual look once a quarter finds nothing useful.
Size the damage before the fight. Work out what you actually lose; often the cheaper answer is owning position one yourself. The arithmetic is in brand defense in search.
Separate brand and non-brand. If both live in one campaign you will see neither the attack nor the effect of your defense.
File properly. Complain about text usage, with examples and proof of ownership, and expect to repeat the exercise later.
Write partner rules. Spell out in your affiliate terms what may and may not appear in paid search. Most brand-bidding problems come from inside the program.
Clean your own queries. Junk impressions on other people’s brands inside your campaigns are a negative-keyword job — process in negative keywords and the search terms report.

Google Ads trademark policy is not the law

Keep this distinction visible to the whole team: complying with Google’s rules is not the same as complying with the trademark law of your country. National law can create exposure where the platform sees no issue, and the platform can restrict an ad that is legally unimpeachable simply because policy says so. Read the policy yourself and review ads before launch; take the legal question about specific wording to a lawyer. This article explains the platform rules — it is not legal advice.

Pre-launch checklist for a conquest campaign

Competitor brand appears in keywords only — never in headlines or descriptions.
Display path and assets audited separately, including legacy account-level assets.
Automatically created assets disabled or reviewed by hand.
The landing page calls you by your own name and does not imitate anyone.
Comparisons on the page are factual and supportable.
The campaign is split out from brand so you can see what this traffic really costs.
Expectations are set: higher CPC, lower conversion rate, and a likely response from the other side.

If this topic comes up often in your work, the running library of account-level breakdowns is in the PPC Rebels blog, and account infrastructure and services are listed in the PPC Rebels Google Ads agency accounts. The same rules apply to what appears on screen, not only in text — if you are moving into video, the companion piece on shoppable CTV in Demand Gen is worth reading before a competitor’s logo ends up in a frame.

FAQ: trademarks in Google Ads

Can I bid on a competitor’s brand as a keyword?

Google’s policy generally permits it — complaints target ad text rather than targeting. Check your national law separately, since that is a different question.

Can I put a competitor’s brand in a headline?

No, unless you are an authorized reseller, a genuine informational site, or a maker of compatible products. Otherwise the ad gets limited on queries containing that brand.

Will my account be suspended for a violation?

Usually not. Standard enforcement is narrow: the specific ads stop serving on brand queries or get disapproved. Repeated attempts to route around it make things worse.

How does a rights holder file a complaint?

Through the dedicated trademark complaint form, with proof of ownership and examples. Regular account support does not handle these cases.

How long does a review take?

There is no published fixed timeline. Clear-cut cases resolve quickly; contested ones go to manual review. Plan in days, not hours.

We are an affiliate — is that enough to name the brand?

No. You need confirmed authorization from the mark owner specifying accounts, phrases and territories. Program membership alone grants nothing.

What if automation inserted the competitor’s name?

Disable or audit automatically created assets, remove dynamic insertion from ad groups containing brand keywords, then resubmit. Responsibility for the copy sits with the advertiser regardless of what generated it.

Do the rules vary by country?

Yes. The EU applies stricter transparency expectations and enforcement practice differs by market, so audit multi-market campaigns individually.

Can I use a brand in a campaign or asset name?

Internal campaign names are invisible to users and are not reviewed. Asset names and any text that can reach an ad are.

Will a complaint remove a competitor from my brand query for good?

No. It removes the mark from their ad text; the keyword-level presence usually survives, and violations reappear through new accounts and other regions.

Is litigation cheaper than defending with ads?

For most advertisers, owning position one on their own brand is faster and cheaper, with complaints reserved for clear impersonation. Run the numbers on your own funnel.

Does conquest advertising work at all?

Sometimes — with a genuinely differentiated offer and an honest landing page. But clicks cost more, conversion is weaker, and the competitor will likely answer in kind. Measure incremental results, not just in-platform CPA.