Friend-of-the-list Kevin Montel (name shared with permission) asked:
“This (*) is an incredibly valuable breakdown of how to manage brand campaigns alongside PMax.
I have yet another tiny follow-up question. What about brand inclusion and exclusion settings available inside PMax campaigns? Do you consider this in your setup?
According to a recent article (although Google retracted it), this option should also become available in Standard Shopping campaigns.”
(*) The setup Kevin is referring to is the setup I recommend for targeting brand searches via Standard Shopping. (See last week’s AMA newsletter for the details.)
Another great question. Thanks for asking, Kevin!
To start with, the options to use brand inclusions/exclusions in standard shopping: last I heard, this was a bug by Google. Brand inclusions/exclusions are not supported in standard shopping campaigns.
Then the real question: Do I use brand inclusions/exclusions in PMax campaigns?
Yes, and no.
Yes, when Google recognizes the Brand, I use brand exclusions in PMax to prevent PMax from taking credit for branded searches.
However, no, that’s not enough:
- Even if Google recognizes my Brand and I have excluded the brand, PMax search terms still show (popular) typos for the brand name. To exclude all spelling variants and typos, I still prefer to exclude these searches via a negative keyword list that contains my brand name plus all the variations used when searching for the brand.
- I also like to exclude competitor brands for varying reasons. Still, the same issue with variants is at play, AND Google often does not recognize all competitor brands as Brands (required to use brand inclusions/exclusions feature).
So, I always like to exclude my brand and competitor brands, including all spelling variants and typos (via negative keywords), just to be sure.
– Nils
PS: Wednesday is ‘Ask Me Anything’ day. If you’ve got a question to which my answer would benefit a larger part of the community, send it my way, and I’ll try to answer it 🙂