When an advertiser bids on your hotel’s brand name in Google Ads, you can check it with the tools Google provides. To find out whether Booking, or another advertiser, is doing it, you only need to cross three sources: a search in private browsing, the Ads Transparency Center and your Search Console or Google Ads data. None of them says everything; together, they let you see the ad, date it and decide what to do. Here is the method in six steps. To understand why this happens, first read how Booking takes advantage of hoteliers’ brands through Google Ads (in French): here, we check.
Who is advertising on your hotel’s name? The six steps and the tools
Before you search, decide what you want to establish: does an ad appear when someone types your hotel’s name, who is the advertiser, what does its text say, and does your website suffer? Each step answers one of these questions.
- Search for your hotel’s name as a traveler would. Note every ad that appears, with its date.
- Find the advertiser. Google’s Ads Transparency Center lists an advertiser’s ads.
- Measure the effect on your website. Search Console shows it, on the queries that contain your name.
- Read the auctions. Google Ads makes it possible, if you advertise on your own name.
- Interpret with caution. Your records allow you to state some things, not others.
- Decide. Landing page, brand campaign, complaint, follow-up.
| Source | What it shows | What it does not show | Account needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search in private browsing | The ad as the traveler sees it, with its text, at the moment of the search | Neither since when it has been running, nor how often | None |
| Ads Transparency Center | The ads of an advertiser or of a website, with their variants, for the chosen region | The landing page: the ads cannot be clicked there | None |
| Search Console | Your impressions, clicks, click-through rate and position on the queries containing your name | The ads: they do not count in the position | Search Console, for your website |
| Auction insights | The other advertisers that take part in the same auctions as your ads | Nothing without a campaign with enough activity, nor below a 10% impression share | Google Ads |
Step 1: search for your hotel’s name the way a traveler does
Open a private browsing window, with no Google account signed in, to limit the effect of your search habits. Type, one after the other, the exact name of the property, then the name with the city, with “hotel” and with “reservation”. For each result that Google flags as an ad, note:
- the advertiser: the displayed name or the website address;
- the text of the ad, and above all whether it repeats the name of your hotel;
- the date, the time, the device and the city you are searching from.
Repeat from a phone and from a computer, at different times and on different days. According to Google’s help page on Ad Rank, it is recalculated at every search, taking the context into account: words typed, location, device, time. An ad seen on Monday at noon may be absent on Tuesday evening. A dated screenshot is worth more than a memory; there is no need to click the ad.
Step 2: find Booking’s ads in the Ads Transparency Center
Google runs an Ads Transparency Center. Its search accepts the name of an advertiser or a website, and a menu lets you choose the region: pick France. An advertiser’s page shows its legal name, its country and whether its identity has been verified.
- Search for the advertiser you noted in step 1 or, if you did not see one, the name or website of the platform you suspect, then open the list of its ads.
- Narrow the list before browsing it. An advertiser’s page can be filtered by date, by platform (“Google Search”, Maps, Play, Shopping, YouTube) and by format. On October 24, 2026, the “Booking.com” advertiser page showed about 2.6 million ads for the France region: without a filter, the list cannot be read. The Center’s search covers the advertiser or the website, not the words of an ad: the ad you noted in step 1, with its date, tells you what to look for.
- Open the “Ad details” page of the ads that mention your property. On October 24, 2026, the one for an ad taken as an example showed where the ad ran, the dates of its first and last showing, the topic, the format, the mention of who paid for the ad and the number of variants; Google shows up to five common variants of the same ad. The Center shows the name of the advertiser there, not that of the agency that creates its ads, as well as the name of the payer when it is different.
- Note the serving periods when they appear on the page: Google publishes them only after a 90-day delay.
If no ad mentions your name, do not conclude that nobody has bought it as a keyword: the Center presents ads, and the “Ad details” page does not list keywords. Step 5 comes back to what you can say.
Step 3: measure the effect on your website in Search Console
Search Console does not show ads. Google’s help on impressions, clicks and position specifies that ads do not count in the numbering of positions: your link can be in position 1 with an ad above it. This report shows what your website receives on the queries that contain your name, not who appears next to it.
- Isolate the name queries. In the performance report (search results), click “+ Add filter”, choose “Queries” then “Custom (regex)”.
- List your variants. Put them in parentheses, separated by a vertical bar, with straight apostrophes if the name contains any:
(name|name without accent|name city). The simple “Queries containing” filter takes only one string, matched exactly, spaces included, according to the help page on advanced filtering; the regular expression lets you list several, and so write the spellings with and without accents. - Try the branded queries filter, if it is offered. Google describes it in its announcement: a classification made by an AI-assisted system, which includes typos, which can be wrong, and which exists only for top-level properties and for websites with enough query volume.
- Compare two periods. Take them before and after the date when you first saw the ad: clicks, impressions, click-through rate and position.
Google points out that branded queries generally lead to better-ranked pages and higher click-through rates than other queries. A clear drop in the click-through rate on your name therefore deserves a look. It is a clue: the season, a modified page or a change in position also weigh in, and nothing in these figures points to an advertiser.
Step 4: read the auctions on your name in Google Ads
This step concerns the hotel that has a Search campaign on its own name, or has one managed. Without a campaign, there is nothing to compare: go to step 5. With a campaign, the help page Auction insights gives the path: in the Campaigns menu, open Campaigns, Ad groups or Search keywords, tick the line you want, then click “Auction insights”.
The report compares your ads with those of the other advertisers that take part in the same auctions, each one identified by its website. Google specifies that it shows no insights below a 10% impression share, and that it excludes Search Partners. For a Search campaign, here are four of the six statistics, as Google defines them:
| Statistic | What it shows, according to Google |
|---|---|
| Impression share | The share of the impressions your ads received out of those they were eligible to receive, according to Google’s estimate |
| Overlap rate | How often your ad and another advertiser’s ad were shown at the same time |
| Outranking share | The proportion of times your ad was placed higher than another advertiser’s ad, including when only yours was shown |
| Position above rate | The proportion of simultaneous showings where the other advertiser’s ad appeared above yours |
Two other columns help read a lack of serving, according to the page on impression share data: “Search lost IS (rank)”, which counts the time the ad did not run for lack of a sufficient rank in the auction, and “Search lost IS (budget)”, which counts the time it did not run for lack of enough budget. The second has nothing to do with a competitor.
Two reports complete the picture. The search terms report lists the searches that triggered your ads. The paid and organic report, available when Search Console and Google Ads are linked, puts your organic results and your text ads side by side, with a filter on the queries containing your brand name; Google specifies that what you invest in paid search does not influence your organic ranking.
Step 5: what you can state, and what you cannot
A record does not prove everything. Here is what each finding allows.
| What you observe | What you can say | What you cannot say |
|---|---|---|
| A third-party ad appears on your name (step 1) and is listed in the Transparency Center (step 2) | This advertiser runs ads on searches for your name, on these dates, from these places and on these devices | Which keyword it bought or how much it spends: you see the ad displayed, not its campaign settings |
| Your clicks on your name drop at the same time (step 3) | The two facts coincide in time | That the ad is the cause |
| The advertiser appears in your Auction insights (step 4) | It takes part in the same auctions as your campaign, with the rates shown | That its text mentions your name, or why it takes part |
| You see no third-party ad | None appeared during your searches | That none is running: the display is recalculated at every search, so repeat the check |
Keep the file: dated screenshots, list of advertisers, Search Console exports. It serves to make decisions, and to support a complaint if you file one.
Step 6: decide what to do, then follow up over time
- Take care of the page that receives the click. Whether the traveler comes from an ad or from your organic result, they must see right away that they are on the property’s own website and be able to choose their dates. On the home page of Home Sweet Home Paris (parisluxurystay.com), a “Réservation” button is visible from the first image. For a website that takes bookings itself, Hotel Web Design offers the Booky booking engine: 0% commission on bookings taken with Booky. See the booking website page (in French).
- Decide on a brand campaign. Advertising on your own name is allowed; the benefit is measured in extra direct bookings, compared with what you pay. The page Google Ads for hotels and restaurants (in French) describes the approach, and how to use Google Ads to attract more direct bookings (in French) goes into detail. For Google Hotels, see setting up Google Ads for a hotel (in French).
- File a complaint, if you own the trademark. Google handles only the complaints filed by the owner, with the “Report Content On Google” tool, against specific advertisers identified by their address, in the countries and sectors where the rights are demonstrated. Nothing guarantees that the complaint will succeed. The details of the rules are in Google Ads’ trademark policy.
- Reread your contract with the platform. Its terms may frame what you do with its name; read the ones that bind you. To measure what this channel costs you, see the real cost of Booking and Airbnb commissions (in French).
- Repeat the check every month or every season, with the same queries, and compare.
Your Google Business Profile and your organic search ranking remain what you control best: see optimizing the Google Business Profile (in French), the guide to organic search for hotels (in French) and the ways to get back the contact details that Booking keeps for itself (in French). The place that platforms take in Google when a website is poorly optimized is covered in why OTAs win when your website is poorly optimized (in French).
Bidding on a hotel brand name: what Google and the law say
Google Ads’ trademark policy rests on the complaint of the trademark owner: Google examines it and may decide to restrict the use of the trademark in ads. Among its criteria, it does not restrict the use of a trademark as a keyword. It restricts the use of a trademark in the ad of a direct competitor, and the ads that use it in a deceptive or unclear way; the trademark must appear in the ad itself, not only on the landing page. Conversely, the same page lets certain uses through, for example that of a reseller whose landing page allows people to buy what the trademark designates, provided that the ad and the page clearly say that it is a reseller: one more reason to promise nothing about a complaint. Google also says it respects local trademark law. The full table of this policy is in the article devoted to that subject (in French).
European law assesses the display case by case. In the Google France judgment of March 23, 2010, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the owner of a trademark may oppose an advertiser choosing, without the owner’s consent, a keyword identical to its trademark to promote goods or services identical to those the trademark covers, where the ad does not enable, or enables only with difficulty, the average internet user to ascertain where the offer comes from; it also ruled that Google, by offering these keywords, does not itself use the trademarks. The Interflora judgment of September 22, 2011 takes up this criterion, speaks of the “normally informed and reasonably attentive” internet user and treats the trademark with a reputation separately. These judgments concern registered trademarks and were delivered under Directive 89/104/EEC: a lawyer will tell you what applies today to your case.
Key takeaways
To find out who is advertising on your hotel’s name, note what a traveler sees, find the advertiser in the Ads Transparency Center, then measure the effect in Search Console. A hotel’s name can be bought as a keyword; what you observe tells you neither the keyword bought nor the cause of a drop in clicks. Then decide with a dated file rather than with an impression.
Frequently asked questions about Booking ads and your hotel’s name
How can I tell whether Booking advertises on my hotel’s name?
Search for your hotel’s name in private browsing, from a phone and from a computer, and note the results flagged as ads, with their date. Then find the advertiser in Google’s Ads Transparency Center, for the France region. This establishes that an ad was displayed, not which keyword triggered it. The complete method is in this article, in six steps.
What are Booking Ads?
The term covers two things. On one side, the ads Booking buys in search engines: according to the 2025 annual report of Booking Holdings, most of its marketing spending is performance marketing, which relies mainly on search engines, affiliation, metasearch engines and social networks. On the other side, advertising offers inside its own home and results pages, which its partner pages present under names such as “Native Ads” or “Sponsored Listings”: they concern visibility on Booking (and, for the second, on other websites of the same group), not on Google.
Is it legal for an advertiser to use my hotel’s name in Google Ads?
It depends on the case, and only a judge decides. Google does not restrict a trademark as a keyword; the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled, in 2010 and in 2011, that the owner of a registered trademark may prohibit an identical keyword, for identical goods or services, where the ad does not enable, or enables only with difficulty, people to ascertain where the offer comes from. First check in the trademark database of INPI whether your name is registered, then ask a lawyer.
How do I report an ad that uses my hotel’s name?
On the “Ad details” page of the Ads Transparency Center there is a report button: in the French-language interface it was labeled “Signaler une infraction à la loi” (“Report an infringement of the law”) on October 24, 2026, and the Center’s FAQ page presents it, under the name “Signaler cette annonce” (“Report this ad”), as the way to report an ad that should not be running. For a trademark matter, Google sends the owner to the “Report Content On Google” tool: it accepts only specific advertisers, identified by their address, in the countries and sectors where the rights are demonstrated, with no guarantee of the result.
Does Search Console show competitors’ ads?
No. Google specifies that ads do not count in the numbering of positions, and this report covers only the links to your website. It serves to measure the effect on your impressions, your clicks and your click-through rate, not to identify an advertiser.
Do I need a Google Ads account to check who advertises on my hotel’s name?
No: steps 1 to 3, that is the search in private browsing, the Ads Transparency Center and Search Console, do not require one. The Google Ads account is used in step 4, when you have a Search campaign on your name: Auction insights then compare your ads with those of the other advertisers.
Should I advertise on my own hotel’s name?
It is not compulsory, and Google states that what you invest in paid search does not influence your organic ranking. A brand campaign is mainly justified when a third-party ad appears on your name, and if you measure the extra direct bookings it brings. The details are in how Booking takes advantage of hoteliers’ brands through Google Ads (in French).
