Share of Search: How to Calculate, Use, And Improve It

Share of search (SoS) is the percentage of all brand-name searches in your market that mention your brand. To find it, count how many times people searched for your brand name, add up the searches for every competing brand, then divide your number by that total and multiply by 100.

For example, let’s say your brand gets 20,000 searches in a month, and your three main competitors get 15,000, 10,000, and 5,000 searches, respectively. The total branded search volume in your category is 50,000. To calculate your share of search:

20,000 ÷ 50,000 × 100 = 40%

Because SoS reflects real search behavior, it gives you quick feedback on brand awareness—much faster than surveys or sales reports.

If your share of search rises, interest in your brand is probably growing and may soon turn into a higher market share. If it falls, competitors are gaining ground, so you may need to adjust your message or content before sales slip. Checking this metric every month or quarter will help you spot trends early.

These are similar metrics that can easily be confused, especially because they all measure competitive visibility, but in very different contexts.

Classical Share of Voice (SoV) tells you how much paid-media exposure you’re buying versus rivals.Organic SoV shows how much of the organic search traffic you win on your keyword set.Share of Search reveals how often people search for your brand name compared with competitors—an early signal of brand demand.

Here’s a more detailed comparison to clarify the differences:

AspectClassical Share of VoiceOrganic Share of VoiceShare of Search 

Core question	How loud is our paid media compared with competitors?	How visible is our website in organic SERPs on a keyword set?	How salient is our brand in consumers’ search behaviour?
What’s measured	% of total advertising impressions, spend, or GRPs your brand captures	% of total organic clicks/traffic your site receives across tracked keywords	% of all branded‑search queries in the category that mention your brand
Primary data source	Media-buying logs, Nielsen/Comscore, ad‑server reports	Ranking & CTR models (e.g., Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker)	Google Trends or keyword research tools like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer
Calculation	Brand ad impressions ÷ total market impressions (or spend)	Site Explorer: your est. traffic ÷ sum of traffic of you + competitors; Rank Tracker: your clicks ÷ total clicks across SERP results for tracked keywords	Brand’s search volume ÷ total branded‑search volume for competitor set
Update cadence	Weekly – monthly (ad data lag)	Daily – weekly (depends on rank‑check schedule)	Monthly – quarterly (smooths brand‑search noise)
Key strengths	Budget benchmarking & media‑mix planning; covers all paid channels	Granular, keyword‑level diagnostics; captures SEO/content wins & losses quickly	Leading indicator of market‑share shifts; tied to real demand, not spend
Main limitations	Exposure ≠ attention; often lagging/sample‑based data	Only organic Google results; needs well‑chosen keyword basket	Works best for distinctive brand names; doesn’t explain why demand changed
Typical owners	Brand & media planners	SEO and content teams	CMOs, brand & insights teams

First, you need to get the data on branded search volume. For this, you can use a tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.

Enter your brand name in the search box. Choose one country at a time.Go to the matching terms report.Note down the numbers: SV (search volume for all keywords containing your brand name in the selected country), and GSV (search volume for all keywords containing your brand name in all 217 countries from Ahrefs’ database).

Repeat the same steps for your competitors and key locations.

Finally, add all volumes together, divide your brand’s volume, and multiply by 100. The quickest way to crunch the numbers and visualize results is by using an LLM like ChatGPT.

For brand names that could mean different things (like “Apple” or “Delta”), you can use Ahrefs’ Parent Topic feature to filter out unrelated searches. This helps you focus only on the topics that are clearly about your brand. Once you’ve narrowed it down, you can export the relevant data to calculate your SoS more accurately.

The SoS percentage alone only tells you how much interest you get. To truly judge brand strength in search, you can pair it with other related metrics.

Category penetration

This metric tells you how your brand-name searches stack up against total searches for the whole product category.

If most people already searching for you still make up only a small slice of all category queries, your brand is well-known to existing fans but still hidden from the wider market.

By watching both branded and generic searches together over time, you can see whether you are reaching new audiences beyond your current base and how you stack up against competitors.

You can calculate it like this:

Category penetration (%) = (Branded search volume ÷ Total category search volume) × 100

For example, let’s say you’re in the project management space. If:

Your brand gets 90K branded searches/month.Total monthly searches for all related keywords (including competitors and generic terms like “project management tools”) is 1.5M.

Then:

Category penetration = (90,000 ÷ 1,500,000) × 100 = 6%

This tells you that 6% of all interest in your category goes to your brand. If you’re seeing high branded search volume but your category penetration is low, it means you’re well-known among existing users, but have limited reach beyond your base.

In Ahrefs, go to Site Explorer > Overview, add competitors, and check the Average branded vs. non-branded organic traffic section. From there, add up branded searches across competitors to get the category total.

Momentum

Momentum looks at how your brand’s search volume rises or falls each month and stacks that trend against your competitors.

Faster growth means you’re gaining attention; slower growth means others are pulling ahead. By lining these shifts up with the dates your campaigns began, you can see which promotions truly lifted your visibility.

For instance, in the chart below, you can see how quickly Monday.com began to gain momentum in branded search in 2022. They’re on a good trajectory to catch up with Asana.

To quantify momentum:

Momentum = % change in branded search volume over a period

Suppose:

Your branded search traffic went from 80K to 100K over the last 6 months = 25% growth.A competitor went from 50K to 90K = 80% growth.

Even though you have more total volume, they have more momentum. This helps you identify rising challengers early.

Conversion-oriented intent

Even if your overall branded search volume is small, ranking well for high-intent queries can still drive sales. Adding this layer to your share-of-search tracking turns it into a practical tool, letting you spot brand gains, rising competitors, or slipping demand sooner.

To measure this, use:

High-intent traffic ratio = Traffic from commercial/transactional queries ÷ Total traffic

Let’s say Ahrefs shows:

Total organic traffic = 200KTraffic from commercial + transactional intent keywords = 40K

Then:

High-intent traffic ratio = 40,000 ÷ 200,000 = 20%

A high ratio here means you’re not just attracting awareness—you’re attracting potential buyers.

In Ahrefs, use Site Explorer >Overview > Organic keywords by intent to see traffic breakdown by intent. You can also compare this across brands to see who’s capturing demand.

You can also use Ahrefs to compare keyword intent between your brand and competitors. In the same Overview report, you can visualize this on a chart, showing how much of each brand’s keyword footprint targets informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional intent.

Share of Search in Google’s AI Answers

As Google moves toward AI-powered search results, the way people search for brands could start to change. With AI giving instant summaries on the search page, users might get answers faster, without fully typing a branded query or clicking through to a website.

If you want to see how often Google recommends your brand vs your competitors, try out Ahrefs’ Brand Radar. Simply enter your and your competitors’ brand names, and set the mode to AI overviews.

This will show you how many times your brand has been mentioned compared to competitors and calculate your share over all mentions.

Here are four ideas for using SoS data in your marketing strategy. 

Validate strategic direction early

Share of search helps confirm whether your brand strategy is resonating. If you enter a new market and see an uptick in branded searches before sales appear, it’s a sign that people are paying attention and your positioning is working. It acts as an early pulse check on market fit.

Monitor campaign momentum

Search interest builds across multiple touchpoints. Brands that combine wide-reach campaigns (like TV or social) with useful content often see compounding growth in branded search volume.

By tracking this over several weeks or months, you can see how fast your audience responds and adjust your messaging cadence accordingly.

Spot competitive shifts early

Comparing your share of search trend with competitors over time shows who’s gaining or losing visibility, especially around seasonal events or product launches. This helps you respond to market changes before they affect click share, traffic, or engagement.

Track long-term brand impact

Share of search can be very useful for measuring the impact of brand-building campaigns. You can track changes in branded search volume for your own domain to see how awareness shifts over time, but the real insight comes from comparing that trend against your competitors.

This helps you understand whether the lift you’re seeing is truly market-moving or just part of a broader category trend. If your SoS rises while others remain flat or decline, it’s a strong signal that your campaign had a meaningful impact on brand visibility.

If you want more people Googling your brand, you need to show up in the right places before they even think to search.

That means getting mentioned in trusted articles, reviews, and online communities where potential customers are already hanging out. Let’s look at a few examples.

Run campaigns that spark branded searches

Run campaigns that stick in people’s minds. Whether it’s a cool product drop, a collaboration with an influencer, or a story in the media, give them a reason to look you up later.

For example, when Duolingo announced the death of the Duolingo mascot during a viral campaign in February 2025, the search volume for the term “duolingo” peaked to a new all-time high, and so did the branded traffic to the site (see charts below).

Find competitor mentions using backlinks

Look at where your competitors are mentioned online and aim to get your brand featured in those same places. This is a proven way to build awareness in the right context, so when people are ready to search, your brand is already on their radar.

One way to do this is by following backlinks to your competitors. Here’s how it works in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

Enter your competitor’s URL.Go to the Backlinks report.Enter the word “tool” in the Ref. page URL filter.Set the mode to Group by similar and sort the pages by Page traffic (to show the pages with the most organic traffic first).

Open referring pages and see if you can get a good angle to pitch your product.

Find competitor mentions using brand mentions in AI overviews

Another effective way to find high-profile brand mentions is to use Ahrefs’ Brand Radar.

Click on the Filter dataset button and set the market scope to AI overviews that don’t contain your brand name, and Keyword does not contain [your competitors].Plug in your competitors in the next section and set the mode to AI overviews.

Now, look at the keywords where Google recommends your competitors but not your brand. These are the topics where you’re being left out of the conversation. Try to get your products or brand mentioned on those same pages. This could mean pitching your product to the author, offering expert input, or creating content that’s even more helpful.

Create content for non-branded searches

Of course, you don’t have to wait for others to mention your brand. You can take the lead by targeting non-branded keywords that relate to your audience’s problems. Then, position your brand as the solution directly within that content.

To do this effectively, you’ll need solid keyword research to find the right terms and topics. We’ve got a full guide on how to do that, so you can start creating content that not only ranks but also earns attention for your brand.

For example, I wouldn’t naturally link a marketing analytics brand like PostHog with the term “SEO for startups.” But thanks to a sharp, well-written article on the topic, they now rank in the top 10 for that keyword. By doing this, they’ve expanded their reach, boosted brand awareness, and introduced their product in a highly relevant context.

Monitor missed brand mention opportunities

And if you want to stay on top of what’s happening, tools like Ahrefs Alerts are perfect for keeping your finger on the pulse. You can set them up to monitor the web for pages that mention your competitors but not your brand. This helps you spot potential link or mention opportunities you might be missing out on.

You can also add filters, like Domain Rating or estimated traffic, to focus only on high-quality sites (these could give you a bigger SEO boost). 

Optimize your branded search experience

Last but not least, when someone does look you up, make sure your site is ready: clear pages for things like returns, pricing, or support, and easy navigation that helps them find what they’re looking for fast. A list of your branded keywords will help you with that.

Simply go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, open the Organic keywords report, and plug in your brand name. Then see if the likely reason behind the keyword matches the page that ranks for it.

While the share of search is a powerful way to gauge brand interest and spot early shifts in market visibility, it’s important to understand its limitations.

It’s a directional metric, not a precise one—data can be affected by tool sampling, algorithm changes, or noise.Brand name ambiguity can skew results, especially for generic or multi-meaning names, so branded terms need to be vetted carefully.Not every branded search reflects buying intent; some may be for support or general info, so it helps to segment queries.It’s also not ideal for all brands—smaller brands may lack volume, while larger ones can face data dilution across products or regions.External factors can also cause unexpected spikes or drops unrelated to actual marketing efforts, like news, seasonality, or viral events.SoS probably shouldn’t be used in isolation—combining it with other metrics like direct traffic, social mentions, and sales data gives a more complete picture.

Finally, remember that third-party tools have limits in accuracy and coverage, so always cross-check where possible.

Final thoughts

No metric is flawless and share of search has its quirks. But it’s one of the few ways to peek inside the minds of potential customers at scale. Track it, cross-check it, and combine it with what you already know. Over time, it’ll help you understand not just how your brand is performing, but why.

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