Performance metrics are everywhere — but when it comes to understanding brand growth, most marketers are still working with delayed surveys, black-box brand lift studies, or no visibility at all.

That’s why Share of Search (SoS) has become one of the most valuable — and underused — indicators of true brand momentum.

At Stellar, we’ve developed our own proprietary Share of Search Dashboard to help clients monitor and benchmark branded search performance in real time. This tool goes beyond Google Trends and Keyword Planner — it provides month-by-month insight into how your brand is competing for attention in search, how media is influencing that demand, and whether your competitors are gaining ground.

We built it because we believe SoS is not just a diagnostic tool — it’s a strategic lever. It connects brand-building investment with performance results. It tells you what consumers remember, what they act on, and where your brand sits in the minds of your audience — long before they convert.

What Exactly Is Share of Search?

Share of Search measures how often people search for your brand, relative to the total search volume for your category or competitor set. If 20,000 people search for your brand in a given month and your competitors collectively receive 80,000 searches, your Share of Search is 20%.

It’s not just a vanity metric. Unlike Share of Voice, which relies on media spend, Share of Search reflects something deeper: consumer choice. It shows who your audience is remembering and prioritising when they engage with a category — and does so in near real time.

In essence, it’s a behavioural signal of mental availability — the likelihood that a consumer will recall your brand in a relevant buying moment.

Why Share of Search Matters Now

There’s never been a greater need for stable, independent signals in marketing measurement. With cookies disappearing, walled gardens growing, and multi-touch attribution becoming harder to trust, marketers are increasingly flying blind when it comes to brand-building ROI.

Share of Search offers a solution. It’s privacy-safe, always-on, and grounded in consumer intent. Because it reflects organic search behaviour — not just ad exposure — it acts as a true barometer of whether your media and messaging are landing.

We’ve found it to be particularly valuable in high-consideration categories like wellness, retail, fashion, and consumer finance — spaces where competition is fierce, and memory drives growth. When tracked over time, Share of Search doesn’t just correlate with awareness — it often predicts future market share.

How We Measure Share of Search — And Why We Built Our Own Tool

Although the basic calculation is straightforward, reliable Share of Search tracking at a competitive level requires precision, consistency, and context. That’s why we developed the Stellar Share of Search Dashboard — our proprietary measurement platform designed to automate the collection, comparison, and analysis of branded search volume across defined competitive sets.

This tool pulls exact-match branded keyword data from multiple sources — including Google Ads, Google Trends, and third-party indexes — to provide a clear, accurate picture of how your brand is performing month by month. It maps Share of Search movements against campaign activity, including YouTube flights, Performance Max investment, influencer drops, and even out-of-home launches, giving us a contextualised view of what’s driving attention.

More importantly, the tool doesn’t just report; it diagnoses. With anomaly detection and historical benchmarking built in, we can quickly see when a PR hit drives short-term search spikes or when a competitor is steadily gaining mindshare. And because the platform is modular, we can segment by region, product line, or campaign period to give clients insights that actually inform decisions — not just dashboards.

How We Apply Share of Search in Campaigns

At Stellar, Share of Search isn’t something we just report post-campaign. We use it to plan, optimise, and validate media strategy in-flight.

For example, before launching a major YouTube campaign, we establish a baseline SoS reading for our client and their closest competitors. As media rolls out, we track whether branded search queries rise proportionally — and whether that uplift sustains beyond the campaign period. If SoS increases while branded click volume or conversions remain flat, we investigate friction points in creative, routing, or landing page experience. If SoS remains static, we explore whether the message, audience targeting, or frequency caps need to be rethought.

We’ve seen the power of this approach in action. One of our wellness clients launched a YouTube campaign focused on brand storytelling and education. Within three weeks, their Share of Search had increased by 22%. Shortly after, their Performance Max campaigns began converting at higher volume with no increase in CPA — and their core product range sold through 65% faster than projected.

That’s the kind of measurable brand impact Share of Search helps us unlock.

Where Share of Search Works Best

Although Share of Search can be used in nearly any vertical, we find it’s most effective in competitive, brand-led categories with significant upper-funnel activity. Think wellness supplements, skincare, fashion, travel, personal finance — any space where consumer choice is influenced by trust, recall, and category familiarity.

It’s especially valuable for brands running YouTube, influencer, or CTV campaigns, where direct conversions may be delayed, but branded search interest should rise if the messaging is effective.

It’s less reliable in B2B or low-volume niches, where branded search data may be too thin to yield actionable insights. But in consumer categories, it often acts as a leading indicator of demand — and, in some cases, a warning sign of competitive threats.

Final Thoughts

Marketing is moving fast, but attention still takes time. The question is: how do you know your brand-building efforts are working before sales or conversions tell the story?

Share of Search gives you that answer. It’s a window into brand momentum — into how often people choose to look for you instead of someone else. And in a world where clicks are commoditised, memory is the new moat.

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