Competitor clicks and brand bidding

Competitor click fraud is a rival clicking your ads to burn through your daily budget. Competitor brand bidding is a rival buying your brand name as a keyword. They are different problems with different fixes: one counts as invalid traffic you can document, exclude and claim credits for, while the other is generally allowed under Google's trademark policy. This hub is for advertisers and agencies who see a rival in their auctions, or a pattern in their clicks, and want to know which problem they have and what they can do about it. Start with the seven-step plan to stop competitors clicking your ads, then use the guides below for evidence, brand terms and the auction itself.

Why this matters for your budget

A hostile click costs you three times: the money, the lost visibility and the data. A rival aims at the terms where you compete head to head, which are usually your most expensive clicks, and every one of them is billed like a real visit. Budget burned in the morning cannot serve buyers in the afternoon, so your ads go dark while real people search, the campaign shows "Limited by budget" and the rival takes the auctions you dropped out of. If those visits submit a form or trigger a shallow conversion goal, Smart Bidding learns from them and bids for more traffic like it.

Credits only recover part of that. Google filters the invalid clicks it detects and reviews the rest on request, generally within 60 days, but approved credits do not give back lost impression share or clean the conversion data your bidding already learned from.

Brand bidding adds a cost of its own. A contested brand auction raises the price of every click on your brand campaign, including the invalid ones, and brand campaigns are often the least protected campaigns in an account.

How the guides fit together

The groups follow the questions most advertisers ask in order: is it really a competitor, what about my brand name, and what does the auction show.

Prove it. The guide to proving competitor click fraud in Google Ads explains why one bad week or one suspicious IP is not evidence, and which repeated patterns are: timing, geographic overlap, clicks without believable follow-through and recurrence across campaigns. It also covers how to tell sabotage from ordinary weak traffic before you blame anyone.

Brand bidding. The guide to competitors bidding on your brand name sets out what Google's trademark policy restricts and what it does not. Bidding on your brand as a keyword is allowed, while your trademark in a direct competitor's ad text is not. The guide also traces how a contested brand auction makes every fake click on your brand terms more expensive.

Read the auction. The guide to reading Google Ads Auction Insights shows which domains enter the same auctions as you and how to segment the report by time, device, keyword and location before you act. The companion post on outranking share and overlap rate explains what those columns mean and why their value is in the trend against one rival, not a single target number.

Where to start

1. Read the seven-step plan first. It takes you from confirming the pattern to excluding what you can prove, claiming credits and automating the blocking.
2. Build your evidence with the proof guide. Record dates, times, locations, keywords and lead outcomes as you go, because that file decides whether a credit request succeeds.
3. Add context from the auction and your brand terms. Use Auction Insights to see who competes with you, and the brand bidding guide if a rival also appears on your name.

Common questions

How do I stop a competitor clicking my ads? You cannot stop anyone clicking a public ad, but you can make it pointless. The seven-step plan covers the evidence to gather, the exclusions Google lets you set and when to escalate.

How do I prove it was a competitor? Look for repeated patterns in timing, location and outcomes rather than one anomaly. The proof guide shows which reports point to one source rather than random bots.

Can I stop competitors bidding on my brand name? Usually not, because Google's policy does not restrict trademarks as keywords. The brand bidding guide covers trademark complaints on ad text, brand campaigns and what Google does and does not allow.

Can Auction Insights prove competitor click fraud? No. It shows who bids in the same auctions as you, not who clicked, so treat it as context for your evidence file.

Should I click a competitor's ads back? No. Google's definition of invalid clicks covers manual clicks that increase an advertiser's costs, and retaliating weakens your own claims, as the seven-step plan explains.

ClickFortify scores every Google Ads click on 100+ device, network and behavior data points and excludes invalid IPs automatically through your Google Ads IP exclusion lists.