Performance Max May Filter Out Your Brand: What to Do Now

Performance Max may now filter out searches for your brand and leave them to a dedicated Search campaign instead. This also applies to what are called navigational searches. These are searches from people who already know which company they want and are trying to get to its website.

Google has not said when this started or how often it happens. So it is not certain to happen in your account.

If you advertise on your own name, you should still take this seriously. Without a dedicated brand campaign, you could lose some of your cheapest and best clicks without anyone noticing. If you do have one, it may get more traffic than it handles today.

What Google says on the help page

The help page How Performance Max interacts with other campaigns describes how Google picks a campaign when several campaigns in the same account could show an ad for the same search. The main rule is that the campaign with the highest Ad Rank wins. There is one important exception. A Search campaign with a keyword that is identical to the search is preferred over Performance Max.

The new paragraph sits under the same exception. Google writes that Performance Max may filter out navigational and brand-specific searches so that dedicated Search campaigns can handle them with more precise control. Google gives three pieces of advice for capturing that traffic:

• run a dedicated brand Search campaign with enough budget
• use good ads that are approved and eligible to serve
• consider adding search themes to Performance Max

My reading is that Google wants to move brand traffic to where it can be controlled and measured. Many advertisers have long complained that Performance Max picks up searches for their name and so looks more profitable than it really is. We wrote about that problem in When Performance Max Buys Your Brand.

What it means for you

How this affects you depends on how your account is set up today. The table shows the most common cases.

Your account	What may happen	What to do
Dedicated brand campaign with a healthy budget	Little. The campaign already takes most searches for your name.	Check that the budget lasts the whole day.
Dedicated brand campaign that often runs out of budget	Searches that Performance Max lets go may get no ad.	Give the brand campaign more budget or move money to it.
Performance Max only	Searches for your name may get no ad and a competitor may take the spot.	Start a dedicated brand Search campaign.
Brand already excluded in Performance Max	No difference. The traffic already goes to the Search campaign.	Carry on as today.

The third case is the most worrying. It often applies to smaller businesses and online shops that run everything through a single Performance Max campaign. If the filtering kicks in there, no ad shows when someone searches for the company name. If you appear alone at the top of the regular results, that matters less. If a competitor advertises on your name, it can cost you business. This is a judgement call, as Google has not said how often the filtering happens.

How to check your account

The check does not take long, and whoever manages your ads can do it. Go through the points in this order.

1. Check whether you have a Search campaign that only advertises on your company name and product names. Add common misspellings as keywords.
2. Check whether the campaign is limited by budget. If the status column says Limited by budget, the money does not last the whole day. We explain how to track spend day by day in A Budget That Lasts the Whole Month.
3. Check that the ads in the brand campaign are approved. An ad with limited status shows for fewer searches.
4. Open the search terms report for Performance Max. You will find it under Insights and reports in the campaign menu, and the view is called Search terms and landing pages for Performance Max. Note down what share of searches includes your name today, so you have something to compare with later.
5. Check whether Performance Max has brand exclusions. They are under Additional settings and Brand exclusions in the campaign settings. If they are there, your brand is already kept out.

If you want to keep your brand in Performance Max

Some advertisers want Performance Max to keep seeing brand searches because they show the campaign who buys. That is where Google suggests search themes. A search theme is a word or phrase that tells Performance Max which searches are relevant. Google does not promise that a search theme with your name stops the filtering, and we do not yet know whether it does.

If you prefer a clear split, you can add a brand exclusion to Performance Max. The campaign then does not show for searches on your name in Google Search, Shopping and YouTube search. Online shops have an option that lets Shopping ads appear anyway. Google writes that brand settings limit reach and that performance may drop. Compare the weeks before and after. We have written about how Shopping and Performance Max differ in Standard Shopping or Performance Max.

My recommendation is that anyone who advertises on their own name runs a dedicated brand Search campaign with a budget that lasts the whole day. Given what Google now says, that is the safest way to know where your brand traffic ends up and what it costs.

How to follow up over the coming weeks

Google has not said when the filtering started, so there is no clear date to compare against. Follow the numbers week by week instead.

1. Impressions and clicks in the brand campaign. If they rise without you changing anything, traffic may have moved over from Performance Max.
2. The share of brand searches in the Performance Max search terms report. If it falls, that fits with the filtering being active.
3. Conversions and cost per conversion in Performance Max. Without the cheap brand sales, the numbers may look worse even though the campaign works as before.
4. Impression share in the brand campaign and Auction Insights. That is where you see whether a competitor appears on your name.

The third point is worth explaining to management. Performance Max may look worse in the reports even though the business has not got worse. Add the brand campaign and Performance Max together before drawing conclusions about either of them.

DigitalMassa can review how brand traffic is split between the campaigns in your account and set up week-by-week tracking. Read more about how we work with Google Ads and with e-commerce and brands.

A good first step is to open the Performance Max search terms report and note what share of searches includes your name. Do you know which campaign shows the ad when someone searches for your company?