When searching on engines like Google or Bing, the first results displayed are usually sponsored links. These ads visually mimic regular results but are designed to attract users to specific websites.
How can sponsored links affect your brand?
Although widely used by legitimate companies, sponsored links can also be exploited by competitors or fraudsters. They can:
Divert traffic away from your official website;
Alter the consumer’s purchase journey;
Hide phishing pages or scams;
Damage your brand’s reputation and put customers at risk.
Because ads are displayed according to relevance criteria, when third parties use keywords related to your brand, users may see ads from unofficial websites before yours. This reduces your brand’s perceived authority and increases the risk of confusion.
A user may end up clicking on:
a fraudulent website they believe is official, or
a competitor, completely altering their original intent.
Important!
Search results are personalized. They vary according to:
location
date and time
device
search history
and other factors.
For this reason, ads shown in one search may not appear for another person — or even for you, if you’re using a different device. Likewise, sponsored ads follow these same criteria, which means an ad may not appear in every search.
How does Paid Search Brand Usage monitoring work?
When an ad uses terms related to your brand, it decreases your relevance in the results and increases the risk of confusion.
Paid Search Brand Usage monitoring identifies which ads appear when someone searches for your company name or directly related terms. Tickets generated by the platform always include cases that directly affect your brand.
Since ads are highly configurable, many violations occur outside the final URL — therefore, up to six different fields are captured, which may contain improper use of the brand:
Monitored fields
URL: the final page the user is directed to after clicking.
Redirect URL: the link displayed in the ad, which leads to the final URL.
Search Keywords: the keywords used to trigger the ad.
Visible URL: the address shown in green on Google; it’s a customizable text that may not reflect the real URL.
Ad Title: may mention your brand, even if unrelated to the final page.
Ad Description: small text displayed below the visible URL.
How are cases triaged?
Since the violation occurs in the ad and not on the final page, it is not possible to analyze only the content or the domain. For this reason, Paid Search Brand Usage tickets are automatically sent to the “Incidents” list a few minutes after detection.
Reopened tickets retain the original ad data to make tracking easier.
How to manually create a Paid Search Brand Usage ticket?
Requests for Takedown of paid ads are accepted in the following cases:
Removal of paid ads (Google Ads) that improperly use the brand or violate copyright in the title or description.
Removal of websites containing copyrighted materials hosted on servers that do not respond.
Cases we do NOT handle:
organic search results;
Google News results;
keywords.
Before creating a ticket, it is recommended to run a search in the platform to avoid duplicates. For more information, refer to the article “Manual Ticket Search.”
Step-by-step to create the ticket
Access the Digital Frauds area.
Click “+ Add Ticket.”
Select the affected asset.
Choose the ticket type: Paid Search Brand Usage.
Indicate whether you want to create an Incident or send the case to Quarantine.
Enter the URL. If there is more than one, use the “Create more than one ticket” option.
Click “+ Add.”
For more details, see the article “Manual Ticket Addition.”
Attention!
When requesting Takedown for manually created tickets, the customer must include:
Visible URL
Redirect link
Ad title
Ad description
This information must be included in the ticket notes or sent to [email protected]. If the data is not provided, the Takedown process will be halted.
Your Paid Search Brand Usage ticket is now created. 🎉
If you have any questions, just reach out to us at [email protected]! 😊