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Brand Defense: San Antonio

Objective

Defend See Sight Tours brand queries in the San Antonio market from OTA conquesting (Viator, GetYourGuide, and similar marketplaces bidding on our own name). San Antonio already runs 14 live products (live CMS product counts, 2026-08-30, journal entry 003) plus a dedicated paid landing page, so existing paid spend is generating brand searches here right now. Every one of those searches that lands on an OTA result instead of us is a guest paying a marketplace fee for a tour we run ourselves.

Success is measured as impression share on our own name and defended direct bookings, never ROAS. This campaign is not a growth lever; it is insurance on demand we already created.

Campaign settings

  • Type: Search only.
  • Search partners: OFF.
  • Display expansion: OFF.
  • Geo targeting: United States + Canada. Targeting setting: "Presence or interest" (the default), not "Presence only." Rationale: guests researching and booking a San Antonio tour do so from home, often weeks ahead of the trip, not while physically standing in Texas. Presence-only targeting would exclude the exact pre-trip research moment this campaign exists to defend.
  • Language: English.
  • Bidding: Target Impression Share, 90 to 95 percent, location "Top of results page." Max CPC cap: 3 USD to start.
  • Budget: 75 USD/month to start, in line with the 50 to 150 USD/month per-market range for always-on brand defense. Revisit after the first 4 weeks of impression share data.
  • AI Max: OFF. Per docs/research/marketing/google-youtube.md:72, AI Max underperforms traditional match types specifically on brand campaigns: a tested comparison found a 35 percent lower ROAS, with CPA of 100.37 USD under AI Max versus 43.97 USD under standard exact match. Brand defense already runs near-perfect Quality Score on exact match; AI Max's broader query matching adds a documented cost penalty with no upside here.

Keywords

Exact match only. Every keyword contains a brand token ("see sight," "seesight," or "sea sight") so no generic sightseeing query can enter through this campaign.

[see sight tours]
[see sight tours san antonio]
[see sight san antonio]
[see sight tours san antonio tx]
[seesight tours]
[seesight tours san antonio]
[seesight san antonio]
[seesight]
[sea sight tours]
[sea sight tours san antonio]
[sea sight san antonio]
[see sight tours alamo]
[see sight tours river walk]
[see sight tours reviews]
[see sight tours san antonio reviews]
[book see sight tours san antonio]

Negative keywords

Exact match negatives, applied at the campaign level.

Employment / non-commercial intent:

[see sight tours jobs]
[see sight tours careers]
[see sight tours hiring]
[see sight tours salary]
[see sight tours application]
[see sight tours employment]

Account / login intent (not a booking search):

[see sight tours login]
[see sight tours sign in]
[see sight tours my account]

Complaint / refund-seeking intent (route to support, not paid landing):

[see sight tours complaint]
[see sight tours refund]
[see sight tours scam]
[see sight tours cancellation policy lawsuit]

Close-variant generic leakage protection. These are the generic sightseeing queries closest to our brand name in the auction; blocking them stops Google's close-variant matching from pulling this campaign into non-brand, non-defensive territory:

[sightseeing tours]
[sightseeing tours san antonio]
[san antonio sightseeing]
[san antonio sightseeing tours]
[sightseeing tours near me]
[guided sightseeing tours san antonio]

Ads

One RSA per ad group. This campaign runs a single ad group ("SA Brand Exact") since all keywords point to the same defensive intent and the same landing page.

headlines:
  - "Official See Sight Tours"
  - "Book Direct, No Fees"
  - "You're on the Real Site"
  - "We Run This Tour"
  - "Best Price Guarantee"
  - "Local Guide, Small Group"
  - "Free 24hr Cancellation"
  - "Skip the Marketplace"
  - "San Antonio, Direct"
  - "Alamo & River Walk Tour"
  - "No Booking Fees Here"
  - "The Company, Not a Reseller"
descriptions:
  - "You book with the company that actually runs the tour. No marketplace fee."
  - "Best Price Guarantee. We match any lower price you find."
  - "Free cancellation up to 24 hours before your tour. Plans change."
  - "A local guide who knows the Alamo and River Walk, in a small group."

Pin "Official See Sight Tours" to position 1: on a brand-defense line, the searcher needs to confirm within one glance that this is the operator's own result, not a marketplace bidding on our name.

Sitelinks

Display text (max 25 chars) Final URL
San Antonio Tours https://seesight-tours.com/san-antonio-tours
Reviews https://seesight-tours.com/reviews
Contact Us https://seesight-tours.com/contact
Our Local Guides https://seesight-tours.com/guides

Final URLs and UTM

Final URL: https://seesight-tours.com/san-antonio-tours

Append to every keyword and sitelink final URL:

?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=brand-defense-san-antonio-tours

gclid autotagging carries through automatically once a guest clicks: the click ID is captured into the ss_attr first-party cookie and forwarded into Stripe metadata at checkout, per lib/attribution/capture.ts. No manual gclid parameter needs to be added to the URL; Google Ads autotagging plus the existing capture logic handles it end to end.

Launch checklist

  • Conversion feed live check in Meta/Google diagnostics: NOT required for launch. This is a defensive campaign measured on impression share, not conversion optimization, so it can go live before that diagnostic is green.
  • Confirm AI Max is OFF at the campaign level.
  • Confirm Search partners is OFF.
  • Confirm Display expansion is OFF.
  • Confirm geo targeting is United States + Canada, "Presence or interest."
  • Confirm Target Impression Share is set to 90 to 95 percent, "Top of results page," with the 3 USD max CPC cap in place.
  • Confirm all 16 keywords are exact match and every one contains a brand token.
  • Confirm all negative keyword lists above are applied at the campaign level.
  • Confirm the UTM string on the final URL matches utm_campaign=brand-defense-san-antonio-tours exactly.
  • Check the search terms report DAILY for the first 14 days after launch. Add any generic-query leakage as a new exact-match negative the same day it appears; do not wait for a weekly review.
  • Screenshot exact-brand impression share weekly, starting week 1, to track progress toward the 90 percent target.

Success metrics

  • Exact-brand impression share reaches 90 percent or higher within 4 weeks of launch.
  • Branded CPC stays under 1.50 USD.
  • Monthly cannibalization audit shows OTA ads displaced on our brand terms in San Antonio (spot-check the SERP for [see sight tours san antonio] and confirm no Viator or GetYourGuide ad appears above or beside ours).
  • Journal entry 003 records the readout: impression share achieved, final branded CPC, and whether any OTA conquesting was observed and resolved.