AdWords Help

Double Serving

Don't double-serve ads.

To protect the value and diversity of the ads running on Google, we don't generally permit advertisers to manage multiple accounts featuring the same business or keywords. Furthermore, Google doesn't permit multiple ads from the same or an affiliated company or person to appear on the same results page. We've found that pages with multiple ads from the same company provide less relevant results and a lower quality experience for users. Over time, multiple ads from the same source also reduce overall advertiser performance and lower their return on investment.

Google doesn't allow advertisers or affiliates to have any of the following:

• Ads across multiple accounts for the same or similar businesses
• Ads across multiple accounts triggered by the same or similar keywords

Unless explicitly advised by Google, individuals advertising for themselves or for their own businesses may only have a single AdWords account. However, your account may contain multiple ad groups and ads triggered by the same or similar keywords.

Only client managers (such as third parties or search engine marketers) who use a My Client Center account can have multiple AdWords accounts. All associated accounts are required to be linked to the manager's My Client Center account. If you're interested in creating a My Client Center account so you can manage multiple AdWords accounts for other people, you can sign up for Google Advertising Professionals.

To protect trust in Google, and to provide a quality experience for our advertisers and our users, the double-serving policy is strictly enforced. Exceptions are granted only in very limited cases. Advertisers seeking an exception to Google's double-serving policy are required to contact AdWords Support.

When reviewing requests, we focus on the preservation of a unique user experience for each site, and also take into account the following:

• The destination site for each ad offers different products or services (for example, a large manufacturer with two product sites, one solely for stereos and one solely for computers, both running on the keyword 'electronics')
• The destination site for each ad serves a different purpose (for example, one site focuses on product information only, and the other site focuses on product sale only)
• Any product overlaps for each ad's destination site are not significant enough to affect user experience
• The pricing difference offered by each site is significant and based on the same criteria (for example, if one site includes pricing with tax, the other site must include pricing with tax)

The following criteria are generally not considered for exceptions:

• Different target audiences such as B2B, B2C, and gender
• Different branding of websites. Websites advertising similar products with different branding will be reviewed against user experience criteria above
• Business structure - e.g., different divisions within the same company or group
• Accounts being handled by various 3rd parties such as agencies and SEOs (search engine optimizers)

View all related policies