For a while I'd bid on the names of competitors (Not being scammy - just trying to win the #1 result placement); however, I found I was spending a bunch with basically zero conversions because - I assume, if someone is searching for something, they're expecting that something, so when they click it and realize it's not - they just exit.
On the other hand, bidding my own name: pennies.
From the end user's point of view, how is "win the #1 result placement" for a competitor's name not a blatant scam?
It's the difference between bidding on the keyword BrandX when my company is ABCBrand with an ad that says:
"Come shop at BrandX" .. when it's going to my ABCBrand, and possibly even having a landing page pretending to be BrandX
vs.
"Come shop at ABCBrand" ... and going to my ABCBrand, as it should.
[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-abuse...
I can plug OEM 1 + Model1 and get two to three ads for OEM2/3/4 before I get the result I was looking for.
There should be a solution to the problem of the scammers. Banning advertising being allowed to show up on someone else's organic search results ain't it.
You shouldn't need to do this. Googles ad auction on search multiplies your bid by a quality score when deciding which ad to show. A site that satisfies what the user is looking for will have a high quality score, whereas the 'wrong' site (ie. one for a competitor) will have a low quality score - partly determined by the user clicking the back button when they find they have been misled.
That means that if your competitors are pumping $100 into becoming the top search result, you perhaps only need to put $1 into getting the same ad spot.
If you are finding that not to be true, then it might be because your site is low quality for some reason (for example, maybe it doesn't load for some users in some browsers), or maybe your site doesn't have the info people are looking for when they search your company name.