Check it in thirty seconds: search your business name in an incognito window, from your city, and look at what sits above your listing. If a competitor's ad is there, they are bidding on your name.

It is legal in South Africa, it is common, and there is a straightforward response.

What the rules actually allow

Google permits advertisers to use competitor brand names as keywords. Anyone can bid on your business name and there is no policy route to stop them.

What Google restricts is the use of a registered trade mark in the ad text. If a competitor's headline contains your trade marked business name, you can file a trade mark complaint with Google and it will generally be removed.

So the practical position is: they can target your name, they usually cannot write it in the advert.

Why you should probably bid on your own name

The instinctive objection is that you already rank first organically, so paying for the click is buying something you had.

That holds only when nobody else is bidding. Once a competitor is there, the choice is not free versus paid, it is your ad above your listing or theirs.

Three reasons it is usually worth it:

It is cheap. Brand searches produce very high quality scores because your ad, keyword and landing page match the query perfectly. Clicks often cost a fraction of generic terms.

You control the message. Your organic listing shows whatever Google chooses. Your ad says exactly what you want, with sitelinks to the pages you want people on.

It occupies the space. Every position you hold is one a competitor does not.

How to test whether it pays for you

Do not take the argument on faith, and do not take the objection on faith either.

Run brand campaigns for four weeks and record total enquiries. Then pause for four weeks and record again. Look at combined paid and organic enquiries, not paid alone, because the question is whether the ad adds enquiries or merely relabels them.

If total enquiries hold steady while you pause, the ads were cannibalising your organic traffic and you can stop. If they drop, competitors were taking the difference.

Setting up a brand campaign properly

Setting	Choice
Campaign	Separate from your generic campaigns
Match type	Phrase and exact on your name and close variants
Budget	Small; brand volume is limited by definition
Negatives	Jobs, careers, complaints, reviews, login
Ad copy	Your actual offer, with sitelinks
Landing page	Homepage or the page they were probably after

Keeping it separate matters. Brand terms convert far better than generic ones, and mixing them into one campaign makes the generic performance look better than it is and hides where the money is really working.

Should you bid on their names?

Legal and common. Expect low quality scores and higher click costs, because your page is not a good match for a search for someone else's business.

It works reasonably in considered purchases where people compare suppliers, and poorly in urgent local services where the searcher wants that specific business now. Do not use their name in your ad text.

Juicy Designs structures brand and generic campaigns separately and reports them separately. See Google Ads in Pretoria or a free account audit. Related: match types explained.

Frequently asked questions

Are my competitors bidding on my business name?

Possibly, and it is legal in South Africa. Search your own business name in an incognito window and see whose ads appear above your listing. Google permits bidding on competitor brand names as keywords, though it restricts using a trade marked name in the ad text itself.

Should I bid on my own business name?

Usually yes, and it is cheap. Brand searches have very high quality scores, so clicks cost far less than generic terms, and it stops a competitor occupying the space above your own organic listing.

Is it not a waste to pay for traffic I would get free?

Partly, but not entirely. If a competitor is bidding on your name, the choice is not free versus paid, it is your ad or theirs at the top of the page. Test it by pausing for two weeks and watching total brand enquiries.

Can I stop competitors using my name?

You can file a trade mark complaint with Google if they use your registered trade mark in their ad text. You generally cannot stop them using it as a keyword, which is where most of it happens.

Should I bid on competitor names?

It is legal and common, but expect low quality scores and higher click costs, since your page does not match the search. It works better in considered purchases than in urgent local services.