How to Increase Branded Searches (and Why They Matter)

“We switched the ads off and traffic halved within a month.”

That sentence sounds like a budget problem, but it is not. What is left when the ads stop is the brand’s own demand, and the size of that demand shows up in exactly one place: whether people search for you by name. Branded search is therefore not an output of marketing, it is marketing’s report card.

Its measurability comes from the same place. Awareness has to be asked about in a survey; searches made with a brand name can simply be counted. The study Les Binet presented at the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s 2020 EffWorks conference established that a brand’s share of search acts as a leading signal for market share while in automotive that lead extends as long as a year and, under sustained advertising investment, 60% of searches come from the long-term effect and 40% from the short-term effect (IPA, October 2020). This indicator is not describing today; it is describing the quarters ahead.

At Brandaft, we are an Istanbul-based, measurement-driven digital marketing agency and our stance on this is clear: we do not accept brand work as “unmeasurable”. We do not give ranking guarantees, but we write down from the start which indicator should move in which month. The content and backlink work we ran for Calmoura, a Shopify brand selling tarot cards, grew searches for the brand name in the US market by 200% — the details of that project sit among our case studies on the site.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• What a branded query is, and why it is an indicator rather than a result
• The right setup in Search Console and the hidden trap in the measurement
• The share of search calculation and its relationship with market share
• What Google Trends tells you, and what it does not
• The six levers that genuinely work on the demand side
• Controlling your brand SERP, and the structure that turns the increase into sales
• The five most common measurement mistakes and a 90-day plan

What Is Branded Search? (And Why Is It an Indicator, Not a Result?)

A branded search is one where the user does not describe a need but types your brand name directly. “Buy tarot cards” is a category query; “Calmoura tarot” is a branded query. The difference is not the word count but the direction of the intent: in the first the user is looking for a solution, in the second they have already chosen the solution and are trying to find you.

This distinction matters commercially, because the two query types sit at different points in the funnel. On a category query you compete on the same page as your rivals; on a branded query the page is largely yours. That is why the conversion rate of this traffic typically runs above category traffic and the cost of acquiring a customer falls.

This is also where it turns into an indicator. Branded query volume does not rise directly from any SEO work you do. For it to rise, people have to have seen, heard or remembered your brand somewhere. In other words this number is the output of the whole marketing system, not of SEO.

Awareness is a perception. / Branded search is that perception made countable.

With that frame in place, let us look at why we put this metric ahead of the others.

Why Is Branded Search the Most Honest Metric?

Most marketing metrics can be manipulated. Impressions can be bought, clicks can be bought, followers can be bought. A branded query cannot be bought, because before anyone types your name on a keyboard they have to remember you.

The second source of honesty is that the metric has no lag. Brand health surveys are run once a quarter, they are expensive and they work with small samples. The search side is weekly, free and measured across the whole population. That is the most practical part of Binet’s work: the data itself has been sitting on Google Trends weekly since 2004.

Third, this metric also delivers the bad news. If the ad budget is rising while branded queries stay flat, what you are buying is not demand, just traffic. That finding is uncomfortable but it changes decisions; we cover which metrics genuinely trigger decisions separately on the marketing metrics side.

Once the value of the metric is understood, the next job is setting it up properly — and this is where most setups break at the very first step.

How Is Branded Search Measured? (The Hidden Trap in Search Console)

The starting point of measurement is the performance report in Google Search Console. Filtering the query table for queries containing your brand name and reading total impressions and clicks is the visible part of the job. Search Console setup is something we have covered separately, so here I go straight into the part specific to brand measurement.

The real issue is this: Google removes some queries from the report to protect user privacy. These are called anonymised queries, and Google’s own documentation states plainly that these queries are included in the chart totals, but are not included once a query filter is applied (Google Search Console Help). So the moment you apply the “queries containing my brand name” filter, the number you are measuring is systematically incomplete.

This has two practical consequences. First, dividing the filtered total by the unfiltered site total to work out “what percentage of my traffic is branded” is wrong; the numerator is incomplete while the denominator is complete, so the ratio comes out smaller than it really is. Second, rather than making the absolute number your target, you need to track a time series measured with the same filter month after month. Because the gap behaves in a similar way every month, the trend stays reliable even though the level does not.

The correct setup works like this:

• Write down your branded query list. The brand name, common misspellings, brand + category and brand + review patterns. This list lives in a file, and the same list is used every month.
• Take the measurement with a fixed filter. When the filter changes the series breaks; comparability is over.
• Report branded and non-branded traffic separately. A combined organic traffic chart can mask a fall on the branded side with a rise on the category side.
• Target the slope, not the level. The target is not “10,000 branded impressions a month”, it is “branded impressions sloping upwards quarter on quarter”.

Search Console shows you the demand on your own site. To compare yourself with competitors you have to move to another tool.

What Is Share of Search and How Does It Forecast Market Share?

Share of search is your share of all the branded searches in your category. The calculation is simple: you divide your own branded queries by the total of your own and your competitors’ branded queries.

The value of the metric is not in that simplicity but in the fact that it leads. The study Binet presented at the IPA showed that in the automotive, energy and mobile phone categories share of search and market share accompany each other, that share of search forecasts market share, and that in automotive this lead stretches to as long as a year. The same study notes that every brand has an equilibrium level, and that when a brand falls below that level its share of search typically declines within two years.

In practice this means: if your share of search is falling while your sales still look good, the good news is today’s news and the bad news is a bulletin from next quarter. The reverse holds too; once the share starts to move, the investment is working even if nothing is visible yet on the sales side.

The short term shows the sale. / Share of search shows the standings.

There are two things we watch when setting up the calculation. The competitor list should be kept to real competitors; put the giant of the category on the list and your share shrinks meaninglessly and the series goes numb. And category queries do not enter this calculation, only branded queries do.

So which data do we use to calculate that share? The answer is Google Trends, provided you know what Trends is actually telling you.

How Do You Compare Competitors with Google Trends?

Google Trends is the most accessible source available for a share of search calculation. It is free, weekly, and it lets you compare competitors on the same chart.

But Trends does not give absolute search volume. Google’s own documentation says that each data point is divided by the total searches in the region and time range it belongs to, and that the result is scaled to a 0-100 range and that the numbers show relative interest; the same page also notes that two regions showing the same search interest may have different total search volumes (Google Trends Help). So a 68 coming out of Trends is not a volume, it is a ratio.

That is not a problem for share of search — because that is a ratio too. The problem starts when people try to read the Trends output as “how many people searched for us this month”.

The rules we apply when setting it up:

• Query the brand name as a “search term”, not as a “topic”. Choosing the topic pulls in the queries Google associates with it as well, and blurs the signal.
• Fix the geography and the time range. When the range changes the scaling is recalculated, and the old chart is no longer comparable.
• Look at a five-year window. Monthly fluctuation hides the trend; the annual slope does not.
• If the brand name is a generic word, Trends cannot be used. In that case the Search Console series and direct traffic remain the only indicators.

Once the measurement is in place, the real question arrives: how does this number go up.

How to Increase Branded Searches: 6 Levers on the Demand Side

Because this number is the result of people remembering the brand, every lever here is about memory. The six headings below are in the order in which we have seen them produce measurable movement in the field.

1. Being visible at category entry points

People do not remember brands in the abstract; they remember them attached to a moment of need. Whichever moments of need you want your brand to come to mind in, you have to be visible on the queries that define those moments. This is the indirect contribution of category SEO: today’s category visibility is the branded query of three months from now.

Scale matters here. Ranking first on a single high-volume query produces less demand than being on the first page for five different moments of need. Recognition comes from frequency, not from the peak.

2. Using the same name the same way everywhere

For a brand to be searchable, its name has to be spellable. Where the name is written differently on social media, on the invoice, in the ads and on the site, the user cannot type what they remember. Consistency here is not an aesthetic question, it is a measurement question.

You also need to add common misspellings to your query list. With brand names that contain accented or non-standard characters, a significant share of searches arrives misspelled, and unless those queries are in the filter they are not in the measurement either.

3. Using the paid channel as a reminder

The contribution of advertising here is not direct sales but repeated exposure. The long-term weighting in Binet’s study says exactly this: with sustained investment, the larger part of the effect keeps working after the campaign has ended.

The practical consequence: continuous low-tempo visibility produces more demand than intermittent high-tempo campaigns. Spreading the budget over twelve months instead of squeezing it into three means more remembering for the same money.

4. Being visible in third-party media

Users search for a brand when they hear about it somewhere other than your own site. Industry publications, comparison content, podcasts, forums and mentions in authoritative sources are therefore among the strongest triggers. What tripled the result in the Calmoura project was exactly this: a backlink and authoritative-source partnership strategy run alongside content production.

The criterion here is not link value but audience overlap. A mention in a high-authority outlet that does not hold your audience does not move the number.

5. Positioning with a difference worth remembering

Nobody searches for something they do not remember. If what the brand does differently is not as clear as what it does, exposure does not turn into recall. That is why this work cannot be run independently of positioning; when the brand identity side stays weak, visibility investment finds no answer in the measurement.

6. Turning existing customers into people who search again

A far from negligible share of branded queries comes not from new customers but from existing ones: users searching for the brand to reach the site, looking for support, or reordering. Customer experience and post-sale communication are therefore a direct lever.

These six levers produce demand. If there is no structure to meet the demand when it arrives, the increase goes to waste.

Who Manages Your Brand SERP?

The page a user meets when they search for your brand sets the first impression of that brand. If you are not managing that page, someone else is: competitor ads, complaint sites, old news stories or irrelevant social profiles.

Managing the brand SERP consists of three work items. Having your own pages for queries in the brand + category and brand + review patterns, presenting corporate information consistently with structured data, and keeping the brand’s own profiles up to date. We opened up the SEO side of this work separately in the brand SEO article.

The second layer is competitor ads. If a competitor ad shows on your branded query, part of your demand is flowing to them. In that case running defensive ads on branded queries is usually the lowest-cost intervention; because there is no bidding competition, the click stays cheap.

Once SERP control is in place, we start to see the commercial return of the increase.

How Does an Increase in Branded Search Turn into Sales?

If branded search is rising but sales stay the same, the problem is usually not in the demand but in the structure that meets it.

A user arriving on a branded query is looking for something different from one arriving on a category query: confirmation, not persuasion. Price, delivery, contact and reference information should be front and centre. Dropping this user onto a long narrative page means greeting them as someone who still has to be persuaded.

Separation is essential on the measurement side too. When the conversion rate of branded and non-branded traffic is not reported separately, the increase here pulls the overall conversion rate up and a problem on the category side becomes invisible. This is the most common form of concealment we come across in agency reports. We covered the wider frame of this relationship between brand and performance in the performance or brand debate.

Once the structure is in place, what is left is to eliminate the measurement’s own mistakes.

The 5 Most Common Measurement Mistakes

1. Dividing the filtered number by the unfiltered total

Because anonymised queries are left out when a filter is applied, this ratio always comes out smaller than it really is. Every report that calculates branded share this way makes the brand work look weaker than it is.

2. Reporting branded traffic as an organic win

This number is the output of marketing, not of SEO. Presenting branded traffic as proof of growth in an SEO report hides the stagnation on the category side.

3. Trusting Trends when the brand name is generic

For brands whose name overlaps with an ordinary word, the Trends series measures the word, not the brand. In that case the series can rise without it having anything to do with the brand.

4. Changing the range and the filter in every report

Trends recalculates the scaling according to the range you select, while Search Console returns a different set of queries when the filter changes. Comparability is as important as the measurement itself.

5. Expecting results in the first quarter

This indicator moves late. The equilibrium-level logic in Binet’s study confirms it: in brands that fall below the level, the decline spreads over two years. The upward direction asks for similar patience.

Once these mistakes are eliminated, the timeline becomes something you can talk about.

How Long Does It Take for Branded Search to Increase?

A clear range is needed here, because a vague answer does not produce a budget decision.

The rhythm we see in the field is this: when third-party visibility and category SEO are run together, the first movement in branded query impressions comes at 2-4 months, a readable slope on the share of search side at 4-8 months, and a lasting change in branded traffic’s share of total organic usually becomes visible only after the third quarter has passed. For newly launched brands each of these windows stretches, because enough exposure has to build up before a brand is remembered.

The most important feature of this timeline is that it is asymmetric. The number rises slowly, but it does not fall immediately when the investment is cut; it stays on a plateau for a while and then declines. That is comforting in the short term and misleading in the long term: the picture that looks fine in the two months after the ads stop tells the truth in the fourth month.

Time is not a promise. / Time is a function of continuity.

The Brandaft Perspective: Branded Search Is a System Output, Not a Campaign Target

When we look at a brand’s dashboard, the first thing we ask is “are people searching for you by name, and is it growing”. Because that single question tests how real all the other metrics are. If impressions are rising but branded queries are flat, what has been bought is inventory, not attention.

We do not reduce this to a campaign KPI. When a campaign-based target is set, the team drifts towards whatever will move the metric in the short term — usually buying its own traffic by advertising on branded queries. That grows the number, not the demand.

We do not sell off-the-shelf packages either. Every engagement starts by measuring the current position: the query list is drawn up, the Search Console series is read backwards, and share of search is calculated against competitors. Without those three you can never know which lever is working. There is no binding long commitment and no early termination penalty; the measurement set-up and the content produced stay with the client.

The broad list of tactics for raising awareness is a separate subject; we covered that one in the increasing brand awareness guide. The job of this article is to show you how to tell whether those tactics are working.

The 90-Day Measurement and Growth Plan

First 30 days — set up the measurement. The branded query list is written (name, misspellings, brand + category, brand + review). In Search Console the backdated 16-month series is pulled with this filter and written into a table. The competitor list is decided and a five-year share of search is calculated on Google Trends. The dashboard is split so that branded and non-branded traffic are reported separately. The brand SERP is inspected by hand: is there a competitor ad, which pages are showing.

Days 31-60 — close the gaps. Missing pages are created for brand + category and brand + review queries. Corporate information and profiles are made consistent. If there is a competitor ad on your branded queries, a defensive campaign is set up. On the category side, the queries that define the moments of need you want the brand to come to mind in are prioritised.

Days 61-90 — feed the demand. Third-party visibility work begins: outlets with high audience overlap are chosen, and the brand is placed in comparison and review content. The paid channel is pulled back to a continuous low tempo instead of intermittent campaigns. The first movement in impressions starts to be readable in this period.

After day 90. The monthly reading becomes routine: branded impression slope, share of search, and branded and non-branded conversion rates separately. The query list is updated once a quarter, and newly appearing spelling variations and brand + category patterns are added.

Follow-Up Checklist

• [ ] The branded query list is written and lives in a file
• [ ] The Search Console series is pulled with the same filter and a fixed range
• [ ] It is confirmed that the filtered number is not divided by the unfiltered total
• [ ] Branded and non-branded traffic are reported separately on the dashboard
• [ ] The competitor list is limited to real competitors; the category giant is not on it
• [ ] The Google Trends query is set as a “search term”, with a fixed geography and range
• [ ] It is noted that Trends is not to be trusted if the brand name is generic
• [ ] The brand SERP has been inspected and competitor ads checked
• [ ] There is a page for brand + category and brand + review queries
• [ ] The conversion rate of branded traffic is measured separately
• [ ] The target is defined as a slope, not a level

Frequently Asked Questions About Branded Search

Are branded search and direct traffic the same thing?

No, they are two different behaviours. Direct traffic is a user typing your address into the address bar or using a bookmark; a branded query is a user typing your brand name into a search engine. Both count as signals of brand strength, but the search side is more measurable, because in practice the direct traffic label also absorbs many visits whose source cannot be determined. Watching the two together on a dashboard gives a more reliable reading than looking at either one alone.

Does advertising on branded queries increase this number?

No; it simply moves part of the demand that already exists onto a paid channel. There is a legitimate use for it: if a competitor ad appears on your branded query, a defensive ad is the cheapest way to avoid losing that traffic to them. But that is a protection measure, not a growth strategy. What grows the demand itself is the exposure that happens outside the branded query.

Why do the impression numbers in Search Console look inconsistent?

Because Google removes some queries from the report to protect user privacy, and when a query filter is applied those anonymised queries are not included in the totals. That is why the total you get with a brand filter will never reconcile mathematically with the unfiltered total for the same period. The correct use is to follow the slope of a time series measured with the same filter rather than the absolute number. Because the gap behaves in a similar way from period to period, the trend stays readable.

How many competitors should I include in a share of search calculation?

The 3-5 brands you genuinely compete with for the same customer are usually enough. Making the list longer does not make the metric more accurate; it desensitises it. Add the biggest player in the category and your share drops to a very small number, and your own movement becomes invisible on the chart. The aim is not to map the whole category but to see the direction of your own position.

Can a small brand run this measurement?

On the Search Console side yes, on the Google Trends side usually no. Trends returns no data for low-volume terms, or returns a very noisy series. In that case the measurement is built on the Search Console series, direct traffic and the variety of queries containing the brand name. Growing query variety is a good early signal that a brand is starting to be recognised, even while the volume is still small.

If branded queries are falling, where should I look first?

First at the measurement itself: did the filter change, did the date range change, has a new spelling variation of the brand name appeared. If the measurement is sound, the second place to look is continuity: was visibility investment interrupted in the last two quarters. The third is competition: if competitors’ share of search is rising while yours is falling, that is not a shrinking category, it is lost ground. In most cases these three checks narrow down the cause of the decline.

When does the increase show up in revenue?

An increase in searches usually does not reach revenue in the same quarter; there is a lag roughly the length of the purchase cycle. In B2B that lag stretches to the length of the proposal and negotiation process, and in e-commerce to the length of the consideration period. The leading-indicator logic in Binet’s study supports this: share of search moves before market share. That is why this metric should be read as a leading demand indicator, not a lagging sales indicator.

Conclusion: Branded Search Is the Report Card Marketing Writes for Itself

Most of the metrics on a marketing dashboard show how hard you have worked. Branded search shows how well you are remembered, and because it cannot be bought it does not lie.

That is why setting up the measurement comes before trying to increase it. Any brand work done without writing the query list, without knowing the anonymised query trap and without calculating share of search against competitors stays an investment whose result is invisible. Once the measurement is in place, what comes next is patience: this indicator moves slowly, but when it changes direction it stays in that direction for a long time.

If you would like to read through what has happened in the last 16 months and where you stand against your competitors, the first meeting is free: get in touch with us.