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Google Is Milking Your Brand Traffic – hop2thetop
Posted by on March 27, 2026 at 4:10 amIt's pretty obvious Google is intentionally milking advertiser's brand traffic so as to covertly inflate ad costs across the board.
Why? Because they are actually losing market share to social media platforms, generative search, etc, and have been for the past few years, so this is why the reps have DESPERATELY been trying to get advertisers to adopt broad match, performance max, and now ai max.
This is why when you view your query reports they are FILLED with your brand and competitors brand queries. Google has effectively forced advertisers to bid on each other, without them even knowing it! Only anecdote to this are negative keywords, which is a solution but have fun adding them all day long because Google will show your ads on broad match, pmax, or ai max to anyone searching for any business that remotely resembles yours.
On to LSA, look at the "business search" feature they added not long ago which is turned on by DEFAULT which means they charge you for people searching for your BRAND name instead of actual leads from cold traffic/high intent searches.
On to PMAX. Open up your pmax queries and you'll see by default PMAX goes after your BRAND and WARM traffic even if you don't tell it to do so. This is why brands are showing high ROAS on PMAX for ecommerce, because there is a TON of existing customer base blended into it. All those ads of agencies bragging about 20X ROI, most of it is them cannibalizing on brand.
Just sounding off because I'm feeling a little feisty, that's all.
Anyone else feel this way?
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1 Reply
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There’s definitely some truth about PMax and broad match can lean heavily into brand/warm traffic if not controlled properly, which skews performance.
I’ve seen ace web experts google ads handle this by separating brand campaigns and tightening targeting to get a clearer picture of actual incremental results around.
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Always separate brand and Nonbrand. You can also separate competitors too but not always needed. I’d also recommend not using tROAS on brand. Use target impression share or even enhanced CPC. You control your Brand’s market if competitors want to pay up to out rank you, they are not making a return from it.
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Can also use brand exclusions to filter out competitors more easily vs a just relying on negative kws
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Yeah I’ve seen the same pattern. Every time I loosen match types or let PMax run wide, brand share creeps up and suddenly “performance” looks amazing.
Pulled one account last month, ~60% of conversions in PMax were branded or near-branded once we dug into it with search term mining + geo splits.
Feels less like incremental growth and more like reshuffling credit unless you actively fence it off.
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You’re not crazy, Google absolutely blends brand, warm, and remarketing demand into campaign types that get pitched like net-new growth. A lot of “amazing performance” is really just existing demand capture wearing a prospecting costume.
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Well yes, sure. With broad match keywords and keywordless targeting many advertiers inadvertantly serve ads for their own brand (where they don’t do so purposesly) and their competitors’ brands.
There are several fixes for this.
For your own brand you can exclude it from campaigns using a brand list (noting this functionalty is now only available in search campaigns that have AI Max activated – not great obviously).
You can also just use a traditional negative keyword at the campaign level, as a negative list, or even the account level if you don’t want to run for your brand at all.
For competitors you can also use a negative brand list noting the issue above. Otherwise yes, you have to play a bit of whackamole with negative keywords.
Advertisers and/or agencies that are aware of this shift can easily take care of it so let’s not make a mountain out of a mole hill.
And by the same token, targeting your own brand and competitor conquesting are both valuable strategies for many advertisers.
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But this also makes sense. Google bid strategies go after warmer traffic. If someone is searching for a brand they are closer to purchase than someone who searches something generic.
Your own brand should always be in its own campaign.
As for other brands, if they drive significant volume and the conversion rates are vastly different or you want better control, separate them in to a new campaign. Not forgetting to add negs to the current campaign.
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You’re not wrong about any of this and honestly the PMax brand cannibalization point is the one that doesn’t get called out enough. I’ve seen agencies present PMax ROAS numbers to clients like they discovered some magic formula when half that revenue was going to come in anyway through branded organic or direct. Attributing existing customers to a PMax campaign isn’t performance, it’s accounting fiction.
The broad match thing has gotten noticeably worse too. I run some phrase but mostly exact match only on new campaigns specifically because I don’t trust google’s interpretation of “close variant” anymore, let alone broad match. Even exact match picks up stuff now that isn’t really exact. I check search terms reports weekly and the amount of irrelevant garbage that sneaks through is wild. I had a campaign targeting keyword research services matching to searches for “key west resorts” because apparently google decided those were close enough.
The LSA business search feature being on by default is peak google. Charging you for leads from people who searched your actual business name and were going to find you anyway. That’s not lead generation that’s a toll booth on your own brand. And they buried the toggle for it so most business owners don’t even know it’s happening.
The incentive structure is the core problem. Google’s revenue depends on you spending more, not on you spending better. Every “recommendation” in the platform, every default setting, every new automation feature is designed to expand your spend footprint not improve your efficiency. Once you internalize that, you stop trusting the platform’s suggestions and start treating every default as something you need to actively opt out of.
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