When managing multiple Google Ads accounts for different products, services, or markets within the same company, you may encounter a common but often overlooked issue: your accounts are competing against each other for the same search terms.
This can occur between accounts with standard search campaigns (using keywords) or dynamic search ads (DSA), or when search campaigns compete against your PMax campaigns.
When multiple accounts bid for Keywords that may be triggered by the same search terms, there is an increase in the cost per click (CPC). These keywords do not have to be exactly the same, just capable of bidding on the same search.
Google Ads does not distinguish between accounts owned by the same entity; it simply sees multiple bids for the same term. This can lead to inefficient allocation of your advertising budget, where money could have been used more effectively in other areas.
Moreover, many searches may not trigger the right keyword, preventing the best possible ad from showing to get the click, thus lowering your CTR and conversion rate.
To confirm if your accounts are competing against each other for the same search terms, compare the Search Terms Reports in Google Ads over the same period to see if there are matches. To check manually, follow these steps:
1. Download the search term reports for the accounts you suspect are competing, with the same dates.
2. In each downloaded report, add an extra column titled "account" and write the account name that each "search term" belongs to in all rows.
3. Remove duplicates in each report from the "search terms" column.
4. Copy the rows from one report to another, ensuring both have the same columns in the same order to match when copying.
5. Apply a filter to detect duplicates in the "search terms" column.
6. Filter the "search terms" column for duplicate values.
If after these filters several identical searches appear, you will be able to see where they overlap and in which accounts thanks to the column you added in step 2.
As you can imagine, this task is quite cumbersome, especially when managing accounts with a large volume of searches where Excel might crash or not even fit all searches due to the one million row limit.
In this case, the task becomes even more complicated since search terms for PMax campaigns are really difficult to download from the Google Ads platform. However, you can read your search terms in PMax campaigns with Dolnai.
Keep in mind that PMax campaigns on the search network are going to take precedence over Search Campaigns. So if you have been working hard on a search structure you may find your effort and strategy being displaced by Pmax.
These steps and strategies for solving the competition between accounts, although useful, can be very cumbersome. Even impossible to implement according to company policy, such as the strategy of unifying accounts or coordinating campaigns between account managers, who often do not have that flexibility of decision.
To help you detect this problem more agilely, Dolnai has developed a functionality that not only detects this problem but also provides a solution without having to make major changes to the account.
With this solution you can select which of your accounts you want to compare to see if they are capturing the same traffic. The tool will not only detect if this scenario occurs but will also analyze in which ad groups and accounts it is better for these searches to enter, and it will suggest adding negatives at the ad group level to redirect traffic without having to make major changes to your account.
This way, you will achieve more organized traffic, reduced CPCs, and improved CTR and Conv. Rate.
If your accounts do not share the same domain and you have your account connected to Dolnai in the Competitors section, you can see the impact of your other accounts on the one you are analyzing.
Let's look at a fictional example, imagine that your account sells mobile phones and you also manage the accounts for Apple and Amazon.
In the competitors section you could see how for the same queries Apple and Amazon compete with your account in the data shown in the table.
Go ahead and give a chance to Dolnai and make sure you're not throwing money away on your accounts!
