How to see who’s bidding on your brand name on Google

1. Search for your brand yourself

Search for your brand name, your brand plus “pricing”, “reviews”, “login” and “discount code”, and look at the sponsored results. Do not click the ads: that costs the advertiser money and tells you little more.

This only shows one auction, at one moment, personalised to you. Ads come and go by time of day, budget and location, so an empty page does not mean nobody is bidding.

2. Check Auction Insights in Google Ads

If you run ads on your own brand, the Auction Insights report lists the domains competing in the same auctions, with impression share and overlap. It does not show their ad text or landing pages, and it only exists if you bid on your brand yourself.

3. Look up a suspect in the Ads Transparency Center

Google’s Ads Transparency Center lets you search for an advertiser by name or website and see the ads they have run. It is useful once you know who to look at. It does not tell you who is appearing on your brand searches.

4. Monitor it automatically

A brand ad monitor runs your brand searches on a schedule, from the countries you choose, and records every ad it sees: the advertiser, the ad text, the keyword and the exact landing link. You get an alert when someone new appears, and a history you can show to a competitor, an affiliate manager or Google.

SearchSnitch does this from $19 a month, and you can run a free one-off scan first.

What to search for

• Your brand name on its own, and common misspellings.
• Brand plus intent words: pricing, login, reviews, coupon, discount, alternative.
• Your product names, if they are distinctive.
• Brand plus a competitor’s name (“yourbrand vs competitor”).