Brand searches showing up in your non-brand campaign: how to stop it

What this means

Many stores split their ads into 2 jobs. A brand campaign catches people who type the store's name. Non-brand campaigns go after people who don't know the store yet, with searches like "standing desk" or "espresso grinder".

Your keywords don't keep to that line on their own. With broad match, Google says ads may show on searches that are related to your keyword. With phrase match, ads may show on searches that include the meaning of your keyword. So a non-brand keyword like "standing desk" can pick up "acme standing desk", where Acme is your store.

Shopping campaigns have no keywords at all. Shopping ads use your existing Merchant Center product data (not keywords) to decide how and where to show your ads. Your product titles often carry your brand, so a Shopping campaign meant for new customers can take a lot of brand searches.

Having a brand campaign helps, but only on the plain name. Google gives first place to exact match keywords that are identical to the search term. An exact match keyword is written in brackets, like [acme]. Identical doesn’t include plurals or synonyms, and a longer search isn't identical either. So [acme] wins "acme", while "acme standing desk" is open to your non-brand keywords. Shopping sits outside these rules: the preference rules above don’t apply to any Shopping campaign.

This page covers Search campaigns and Standard Shopping campaigns (the Shopping campaigns you set up yourself). Performance Max (PMax) is Google's campaign type that reaches YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps, from a single campaign. Brand searches inside PMax have their own page.

Why it costs you money

People who type your store name already want you, so those clicks tend to sell. Inside a non-brand campaign they hide how the rest of it is doing. You see a good return on ad spend (ROAS, the sales value you get for each $1 of ads, shown as a percentage) and raise the budget. The extra money goes to the generic searches, which earn less than the average told you.

Here's a worked example. Over 90 days, a non-brand Shopping campaign spent $1,000 and brought in $4,000 in sales from 50 conversions (the sales Google Ads counted). That's a 400% return. Its brand rows cost $150 and brought in $1,500 from 15 conversions. Take them out and the campaign spent $850 for $2,500, a 294% return. Brand took 15% of its spend and 30% of its conversions.

Now say your break-even ROAS is 300%. That's the return where sales just cover your product and running costs, so you make $0. The blended 400% tells you to scale. The 294% says the new-customer part of the campaign loses a little money overall. Work out your own line with the break-even ROAS calculator, and run both numbers through the ROAS calculator.

Brand searches do sell, so PerfoAds puts no waste figure on them. It shows the brand share and the campaign's return with and without those searches.

How to check your account in 2 minutes

1. Select Campaigns in the left menu, then go to Search terms within the Insights and reports sub-menu.
2. Filter to 1 non-brand campaign and set the last 90 days.
3. Search the table for your store name. Try it as 1 word and as 2 words, plus common misspellings and your web address.
4. Add up the cost, conversions and conversion value (the sales total Google Ads records) of the rows that match.
5. Divide each total by the campaign's own total. That's your brand share.

Google says some search terms that don’t have enough query activity are omitted from the search terms report. So treat your brand total as the least it could be.

How PerfoAds flags it

PerfoAds reads 90 days of search terms for each non-brand Search and Standard Shopping campaign. It skips PMax and the campaigns it sees as brand campaigns. A search counts as brand when it holds every word of 3 or more letters from the business name you gave at setup, or the whole name written as 1 word. Longer names get some slack: a word of 7 or more letters still counts with 1 typo, and one of 5 or more with a short ending added. Words like "Inc", "Ltd" and "the" are dropped first. With no business name, the check doesn't run.

A campaign is flagged when brand searches take 5% or more of its search-term spend or of its conversions. Their spend must also clear a money bar. The bar is your account's cost per conversion, or a set amount if that's higher. The set amount goes by monthly spend: $20 under $1,000, $50 up to $10,000, $100 up to $50,000 and $200 above that (scaled for other currencies).

In the example, say the whole account spent $18,000 in the 90 days, so $6,000 a month, with 600 conversions. That's $30 per conversion against a $50 set amount, so the bar is $50. The $150 of brand spend clears it, and the campaign is flagged. If brand had cost $40, PerfoAds would only add a note.

The card lists the top 5 brand searches by spend, the brand share of spend and of conversions, and the return with and without brand.

When it is not a problem

• You already block your brand there. If the campaign, a list attached to it, or the account-level list already has your brand as a negative keyword (a word you add so your ads stop showing on searches that contain it), PerfoAds doesn't flag it. The brand rows you still see came before the block or through a variant you missed.
• You don't run a brand campaign on purpose. Some small stores rank first in the free results for their name and skip brand ads. Then brand terms in a generic campaign may be the only paid cover you have. Make that choice knowingly.
• Your brand name is also a common word. If your store is called "Ember" and you sell candles, "ember candle" may be a generic search. Read the real search terms before you block anything.
• The share is small. Under 5% of spend and conversions, or under the money bar, the effect on your numbers is minor. Fix it when it's convenient.

How to fix it

Step 1: Make sure a brand campaign can take the searches. If you block your name without one, competitors bidding on it can take those searches. For text ads, a Search campaign with exact and phrase keywords for your name, approved ads and enough budget is enough.

If the campaign you're cleaning is Shopping, a Search campaign only brings back text ads. To keep product ads on brand searches, set up a brand Shopping campaign with the same products. Shopping has a campaign priority setting of Low, Medium or High. Your campaigns already have a priority: Low. When campaigns share a product, the highest priority campaign will bid. Give your non-brand campaign the higher priority and your brand campaign Low. With your name blocked there, your ad won't show from the non-brand campaign on those searches. That leaves your brand campaign as the only one holding those products that can still bid.

Step 2: Block your brand in every non-brand campaign.

• Use a phrase match negative. For negative phrase match keywords, your ad won't show if the search contains the exact keyword terms in the same order. So the negative "acme" blocks "acme standing desk" and "buy acme". Negatives won’t match to close variants or other expansions, the plurals and near matches that normal keywords pick up. Google says you'll need to add synonyms and singular or plural versions yourself. Add your name as 1 word and as 2 words, plus your web address.
• Put them in 1 shared list. Go to Keywords within the Campaigns menu and open the Negative keywords tab. Select the plus button, choose Select a campaign, and enter 1 brand term per line, each in quotes, like "acme". Quotes are Google's syntax for phrase match. Without them, the term is saved as broad match, the default match type. Tick Save to new or existing list, name it and select Save. Then go to Exclusion lists within the Tools menu, open the Negative keywords lists tab, tick your list and select Apply to campaigns. Pick every non-brand campaign and select Apply to campaigns again. New campaigns need the list too.
• Keep your brand off the account-level list. Google says that list will automatically apply to all eligible search and shopping inventory in relevant campaign types. Your brand campaign would be blocked as well.
• Brand exclusions are the other route on Search. A brand list is a saved list of brands. With a brand exclusion, your campaign won't serve for queries associated with a brand that you want to avoid. It's available for Search and Performance Max campaigns, so Standard Shopping still needs negatives. Starting May 27, 2025 for Search campaigns, brand exclusions will begin upgrading into AI Max, and to add a new brand list, you will need to turn on AI Max for the campaign. AI Max is an optional Search setting that adds improved search term matching and better text customization of your headlines and descriptions. If you don't use AI Max, negatives are the simpler route.

Step 3: Recheck after 2 weeks. Pull the non-brand campaign's search terms again. Brand rows should be close to 0. Its return will likely drop. That lower number is the real one, so plan budgets on it.

Step 4: Watch the brand campaign. Its search terms should now show the brand searches you moved out. Judge brand by its total sales across both campaigns. If an agency runs your ads, add this to your questions for checking an agency's work.

Check it with a query

The query below uses GAQL, Google's query language for ads data. Run it in a Google Ads script (a small piece of code that runs inside your account) with AdsApp.search(), which executes a Google Ads Search, or send it through the Google Ads API. It reads the search_term_view report. Cost comes back in micros: one million is equivalent to one unit of your currency, so divide by 1,000,000.

Replace acme with your store name in lowercase and set the 2 dates 90 days apart. The % signs let the name sit anywhere in the search. The LIKE operator can only be used on a string field, and the search term is one. Run it once per spelling.

SELECT
  campaign.name,
  search_term_view.search_term,
  metrics.cost_micros,
  metrics.conversions,
  metrics.conversions_value
FROM search_term_view
WHERE segments.date BETWEEN '2026-08-04' AND '2026-11-01'
  AND search_term_view.search_term LIKE '%acme%'
ORDER BY metrics.cost_micros DESC

Leave out the rows from your brand campaign. Then compare what's left with each campaign's totals for the same dates.