Brand Search
Brand search means searches that include your business name or a unique brand term you own. Someone searching Adrythm reviews or Adrythm pricing is brand search traffic. It is the highest-intent traffic on the internet, and most owners ignore that competitors can quietly bid on it.
Why competitors bid on your name
Bidding on a competitor's brand name is legal and effective. The CPC is low because you are the only one optimizing for that exact term. A competitor can show their ad above your organic listing for under $1 a click, intercepting people who specifically searched for you.
If you are a known brand in your market, expect this to happen. The fix is either to bid defensively on your own brand keywords (usually $20 to $100 a month) or to ignore it if your conversion rate from brand searches stays high anyway.
Should you defend your brand search?
Yes if you can see in Google Ads that competitors are appearing on your branded queries, or if your branded organic listing is not visibly dominant. Otherwise no, because defending costs money you could spend on prospecting.
Either way, separate brand campaigns from non-brand campaigns in your account. Mixing them makes both look worse than they are because brand search artificially inflates blended numbers.
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We will check whether competitors are bidding on your brand right now and tell you whether defending is worth it for your business. Free, takes one business day.
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