What is share of search?
Share of search is your brand's portion of all the search demand in your category. If people run 100,000 branded searches across every competitor and 20,000 are for you, your share of search is 20%.
It matters because it tends to lead. Changes in branded search demand often show up before changes in market share, which makes it an early read on where a category is heading.
The formula.
Share of search = (your brand search volume ÷ total category search volume) × 100. The total is the sum of branded search for every meaningful competitor.
Use the same period and tool for every brand so the comparison is clean. A keyword tool gives you branded volume per competitor to add up.
A worked example.
Your brand gets 20,000 monthly branded searches; the category total across all brands is 100,000. Share of search is 20,000 ÷ 100,000 × 100, which is 20%.
What is a good share of search?
There is no fixed target. The useful comparison is to your own market share and to competitors over time. When share of search climbs ahead of sales, it often signals growth to come; when it falls, it can warn of softening demand before revenue shows it. Track the trend, not a single reading.
Share of search measures demand for your brand. Watching it next to the demand showing up as pipeline connects brand interest to actual growth.
How to grow it.
Build brand awareness and category presence so more people search for you by name. Branded search is downstream of being known, which takes consistent visibility over time.
The most durable way to grow branded demand is to be the answer people find when they search the category. That is what it means to grow the branded demand behind it.