Policy & compliance
Trademark policy
A trademark policy sets out when an ad may use someone else's brand name, and gives brand owners a way to complain when it is misused.
Brand names are valuable keywords. People searching "Brand X login" or "Brand X customer care" have strong commercial intent, so arbitrageurs are tempted to build ads and landers around them.
The rules differ by layer. Google Ads' trademark policy lets advertisers bid on trademarks as keywords, but restricts trademarks in ad text when a competitor uses them or when the use is confusing or deceptive; resellers and informational sites have limited exceptions, and trademark owners can file complaints. Traffic sources such as Meta and native networks have their own intellectual property rules and act on brand complaints. Feed owners can also restrict branded terms passed as forced keywords.
The practical risk for an arbitrageur is impersonation: a creative or lander that looks like the brand's official page. That can break platform policy and unfair competition or consumer law at once, and brand owners tend to complain quickly. Compliant operators avoid logos, official-sounding page names and navigational brand terms, which also overlap with typosquatting concerns.
Related terms
Keyword
A keyword is the word or phrase that triggers search ads, either typed by a person or passed to the search feed by a web page.
Forced keywords
Forced keywords are search terms chosen by the publisher, not typed by the visitor, and passed to the search feed to shape which related searches or ads appear.
Typosquatting
Typosquatting is registering misspelled versions of well-known web addresses to capture people who make typing mistakes.
Misleading ad
A misleading ad promises or implies something the landing page does not deliver, tricking people into a click they would not otherwise have made.
Policy violation
A policy violation is any breach of the rules set by a search feed or traffic source, from a misleading creative to non-compliant traffic or a wrongly declared parameter.
Google Ads
Google Ads is Google's advertising platform, where businesses bid to show ads on Google Search, its search partner sites, YouTube and other properties.