Daily Marketing News, October 3, 2026: Google Ads will allow a brand name that doesn't match the domain
Starting October 16, 2026, Google Ads will let some brands label their search ads with their own name, even if it doesn't match the domain. On October 2 we also learned that a US court dismissed publishers' lawsuits over Google's AI answers, and that the Google Merchant Center loyalty program now covers 14 countries.
Story of the day: Google Ads will allow a brand name in ads that differs from the domain
The business name in Google Ads search ads is a short line next to the ad that tells people whose ad they're looking at. Until now it had to match the domain the ad leads to. If a brand's store lived on a separate site, the ad had to show the name of that site, not the brand. An updated Google Ads help page on editorial policies changes this: some advertisers will be allowed to use a name that differs from the domain. On October 2, 2026, Search Engine Roundtable reported that the rule takes effect on October 16, 2026, while Google's page itself just says "October 2026".
There are 3 conditions, and you have to meet all of them at once. The brand name has to be recognizable. The connection to the domain owner has to be verified. The products or services have to be sold directly on the domain the ad leads to, not through a redirect to another site. Google's help page doesn't explain how exactly to verify the connection.
The exception doesn't cover those who sell someone else's products. That means third party resellers, i.e. people reselling other brands' goods, independent booking intermediaries, affiliate distributors and secondary sellers. They still can't put another company's brand in their ads. The other restrictions, judging by the reports, stay the same: the name is capped at 25 characters, and generic, geographic and promotional words are not allowed.
Who benefits is clear: brands with several domains. A separate site for the store, a separate one for the brand, and until now the store's ads were labeled with a domain name people might not recognize. Now the ad will show the name they know. The line for intermediaries is drawn firmly, and that's the right call: otherwise every reseller would sign their ads with someone else's brand.
What to do now. If your brand and your store are on different domains, go through all 3 conditions before October 16. Until Google describes the verification process, gather everything that ties the domains together in advance: who owns them, who they're registered to, where payments are processed. If you're a reseller or a partner, don't change anything: your ad will simply be disapproved.
More news for October 3, 2026
Merchant Center is Google's dashboard for online stores, and its loyalty program lets sellers who already have their own rewards system show its benefits on Google. Previously it worked in the US, the UK, Germany, France, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Australia, with Japan supported separately for points programs. Now India, Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea and Spain have been added, and the help page mentions AI Mode, the conversational AI mode in Search, and Gemini, for the US only. The member price shows up in ads if the discount is at least 5% or 5 units of the local currency. Points and completed orders now count as types of membership, you can connect through the Merchant API and without running ads, and the program shouldn't require future payment, including some free trials. Stores in these 14 countries should check whether their discount reaches 5%.
AI Overviews is the block with an AI generated answer above the regular results, and AI Mode is a separate conversational AI mode. The parameter "?st_source=ai_overview" was found at the end of links from these blocks. Until now, clicks from AI answers couldn't be separated from regular search clicks in site analytics, so the tag looked like a gift. Barry Schwartz, editor in chief of Search Engine Roundtable, tried to reproduce it in several browsers and couldn't. Later he added an update: according to an anonymous source, this is a black hat SEO trick, where its authors push Google to index URLs with the parameter at scale so they can count clicks from AI Overviews. If you see this parameter in your reports, don't draw conclusions from it and don't mistake it for official Google markup.
This page is Google's official explanation of what pages its search considers high quality. According to the Search Engine Roundtable summary, 1 of the new sections explains what counts as a page's main content, i.e. the part people came to the page for, without menus, ads and sidebars, and how quality raters evaluate that content. Quality raters are people who manually check the quality of search results using Google's internal guidelines. The second section is labeled with the abbreviation EOT/SA in the summary's headline. The sections arrived in the wake of the September spam update, so site owners who lost rankings should read the help page in the original and look at their pages through a rater's eyes: where is the main content, and is it drowning in everything around it.
Bing is Microsoft's search engine, and the new block shows products that third party sites recommend. Search Engine Roundtable noticed something odd: the product thumbnails don't lead to the site that recommended them but to various stores. So the review site appears in the results as the source of the recommendation, but the click and the sale go to the seller. Previously, a review site would get a visit to its roundup and earn from the affiliate link. For review and affiliate sites that live on product roundups, this means mentions in Bing with almost no traffic. If you run a site like that, track Bing referrals separately from the rest of search.
This is about the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act. AI bots and crawlers are programs that go through websites and collect text, including for training AI models and for AI answers. Right now some of these bots disguise themselves as regular visitors, and a site can't tell them apart or block them. The bill targets deceptive access to websites and would require crawlers to disclose what they intend to do with the content. If it passes, site owners will be able to let some AI services take their content and refuse others, and that will actually work instead of relying on a bot's word of honor.
The ruling was issued on September 30, 2026, by District Judge Amit Mehta, and the document runs 41 pages. Penske Media publishes Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety, and Chegg is an education platform. Penske argued that after the launch of AI Overviews, the AI answer block above the search results, impressions and clicks to its articles fell, and with them its revenue from ads, affiliate programs and subscriptions. The court rejected the argument about a mutual bargain: an expectation of traffic is not a contract. The judge also dismissed the claim that AI Overviews were being tied to search and wrote that antitrust law is no substitute for legislators. The takeaway for anyone losing search traffic: for now you can't win it back in court, so you have to work with what you've got.
What to do about it: advertisers, online stores and site owners
- Advertisers with several domains: before October 16, 2026, check your brand against the 3 Google Ads conditions and gather proof of the connection between your domains. Resellers and partners should leave their names alone.
- Online stores in the 14 Merchant Center loyalty countries: check that your member discount is at least 5% so it can show up in ads and AI shopping answers.
- Site owners: don't treat the st_source=ai_overview parameter as an official Google tag, and don't build reports on clicks from AI answers around it.
- Anyone who lost rankings after the September spam update: read the new sections of Google's help page on helpful content and check where the main content sits on your pages.
- Review and affiliate sites: track Bing traffic separately and watch whether mentions in the "Recommended By" block bring any clicks at all.
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