Company or Brand Name as a Negative Keyword?

[rwilson]

People are searching for products that I am bidding on but they are including my company name in the search. The search phrase results in an organic first page result and sponsored listing. Would there be any harm in excluding my company name as a keyword?

Anybody have any thoughts on making the company name a negative keyword?

[LucidSW]

There's no harm but I wouldn't do it.

It would be unusual to have a high percentage of people searching on your company and product such as "rwilson widgets". But you got the opportunity to find out with Adwords. So I'd add those keywords just to find out. Create a group for them with targeted ads that would be different from your plain "widgets" keywords.

I'm sure you're thinking, why pay if I don't have to since I'm high in the organics. Thing is, you may not stay there. You are also taking more result page real estate so more opportunity for someone to visit your site. You likely don't/won't pay that much and chances are your ad converts better than your organic listing.

[rwilson]

I hadn't thought of result page real estate or the actual costs, both are very good points. I could create an adgroup for people familiar with the brand and target the content to take them further into the buying process. Thanks for the helpful feedback!

[PaleMoonLight]

I would recommend adding an Adgroup with brand related keywords, and add site links in the ad for said Adgroup. Even if you are ranking for your brand name in the natural search results, having your ad display at the same time can give the impression of more authority to a user.

[netmeg]

My best converting, lowest cost, and highest ROI keywords are my brand related words (helps that in my top two cases the clients renamed the company after the domain name) You could get me to stop advertising them on a bet. Even though we totally pwn the top organic spots as well.