TermAs the studio uses it
Brand Search
A search that contains the firm’s name, a variant of it or one of its own product names: demand the firm already has.
A brand search measures what the firm has already created: its sales team, its trade fairs, its reputation, its customers’ memory. Search Console can now separate these searches by itself (Google Search Central).
Why It Matters
Brand searches are clicked wherever they stand, so they lift every average in a report. A retainer that raises them and not the other kind is maintaining the firm’s existing demand, not creating new demand. In the first reading described in What Are You Actually Paying For?, most of the site’s engagement came from people who had already met the brand.
How the Studio Reads It
The split is built by hand once, from the firm’s own vocabulary: every name, product and person a buyer could only know from the firm, the short form, the old name, the misspellings, the domain typed as a search. Read the right way, a rise in brand searches after a change to the site is a sign the change made the firm memorable to people who first met it through a search without its name.
Asked About
Brand Search.
Should brand searches be removed from reports?
Not removed: separated. They are a measure of their own.
Does the branded filter in Search Console catch everything?
It catches the name and its variants; the firm’s own product names and people may still need to be added by hand.