Exclude brand traffic in non-brand campaigns with negative keywords

What it flagsBrand traffic ending up in your generic campaigns

People searching for your brand name sometimes don't come in through your brand campaign but through a generic campaign. That happens when a broad or phrase match keyword in a non-brand campaign accidentally picks up brand searches too. In the search terms report you then see search terms containing your brand name that record cost and conversions within a campaign that wasn't really meant for that.

This recommendation looks specifically at brand terms that do convert in such a generic campaign. So it's not about waste you want to throw away, but about valuable brand traffic arriving in the wrong place. Search term reports in Google Ads show this kind of skew clearly, and it particularly counts for brand traffic: it's usually cheap and converts above average.

Why it mattersWhy you keep your brand campaign and generic campaign separate

Brand traffic and generic traffic don't belong in the same campaign. Brand searches are cheap and convert highly; generic searches are more expensive and convert lower. When they're mixed together, the good brand conversions pull up the average of your generic campaign. As a result, that campaign appears to perform better than it really does, and smart bidding or your own budget decisions end up steering on a skewed picture.

By keeping brand traffic separate you regain control and insight. You can then steer your brand campaign with its own budget and bid strategy, and judge your generic campaign on what it really delivers without the brand boost. Separating brand and generic campaigns is therefore one of the first things to get right.

How it worksHow AdBuilder tracks down brand traffic in non-brand campaigns

The recommendation only works if you've set up a brand name. AdBuilder splits that name into words and keeps the meaningful tokens: a token counts if it's at least 3 characters long and isn't a stop word (de, het, een, en, van, the, a, an, of, and). If no meaningful token remains, for example with a very short or stop-word-only brand, AdBuilder skips it.

The brand name is matched on a word boundary, so the full name as a contiguous phrase, not as individual letters or a substring. This way AdBuilder flags the search term containing your brand, but not a generic term that happens to contain the same letter combination. Campaigns whose name contains your brand, or the word brand or merk, are skipped: those count as a brand campaign.

For each search term and campaign, the cost, conversions and clicks over the lookback window are totaled. That window is 30 days by default, but can be 60 or 90 days per account depending on available data. AdBuilder only keeps the terms that meet two conditions, and shows the most expensive 12 of those.

• The search term contains your brand name and falls into a campaign that isn't a brand campaign.
• The search term generated more than 0 conversions in that generic campaign.
• The cost of the search term in that campaign is at least 5 euros per 30 days (this threshold scales with a longer window, so at 90 days it becomes 15 euros).
• Purely wasteful brand terms with 0 conversions don't belong here, but in the wasteful search terms recommendation; that one suggests discarding them instead of rerouting them.

What you can doApply the recommendation or skip it

If you apply the recommendation, AdBuilder adds the brand terms as a phrase-match negative keyword (PHRASE) to the affected generic campaigns. From that point on those campaigns no longer serve on your brand, and the brand traffic routes to your brand campaign. This way you exclude brand traffic in Google Ads without losing the conversions: you're relocating them, not throwing them away.

Note the main condition: only do this if you have a brand campaign that catches these searches. AdBuilder doesn't check this automatically, so if there's no brand campaign targeting your brand, you'll be blocking converting traffic and it'll go to a competitor instead. If in doubt, first check whether your brand is covered by an active Search campaign.

• Apply: the shown brand terms are set as a PHRASE negative keyword in the generic campaigns.
• Snooze: you'll get the recommendation again later if the situation persists.
• Dismiss: the recommendation won't come back for these search terms.
• Revert: remove the negative keyword again if you want your brand to keep serving through this campaign after all.