Your Google Ads say “Eligible (limited)”? Check your headlines for a trademark

An ad can be approved and still barely serve. The keywords are enabled, the budget is available, and the status looks healthy until you open the policy detail. Google labels this state Eligible (limited); in account data it appears as APPROVED_LIMITED.

A common cause is a trademarked brand or product name in the headline.

The trademark trap, plainly

Google's trademark policy restricts the use of trademarked terms (including Google's own product names) in ad text. Tools that audit ad accounts, agencies that manage them, and anyone whose product is about Google Ads all naturally want that phrase in the headline. Google doesn't disapprove the ad; it approves it limited, which throttles where and how often it serves. The ad runs just enough that nothing looks broken.

That's what makes this trap expensive: it presents as weak demand or low bids, so the instinctive fixes are to raise bids or widen keywords, paying more for a ceiling that policy, not the auction, is holding down.

How to check your own account in two minutes

What to write instead

Describe the category, not the trademark. “We Run Your Search Ads” and “Free PPC Account Audit” can carry the same meaning without the trademark. Keywords are a different policy area than ad text: bidding on a trademarked term is generally allowed; putting it in the headline is what gets limited. And if you resell or genuinely partner with the trademark owner, there's a formal authorization process, but for most advertisers the fast path is copy that doesn't need permission.

Why this problem returns

Replacement copy often repeats the same restricted phrase because it is the natural way to describe the service. Policy traps recur when a reviewer fixes one ad without checking the replacement. That is an argument for checks that run on every change, not on the day someone remembers.