Brand vs non-brand
Brand traffic comes from searches containing your name; non-brand from generic category searches. Separating them is the first honesty test of any search account.
Brand clicks are cheap and convert at multiples of non-brand because the customer arrived pre-sold — mostly by everything else the business does. Blending them produces a flattering average that hides prospecting economics: an account reporting 6x blended ROAS may be 12x brand and 1.8x non-brand.
Structure them separately, report them separately, and reserve incrementality skepticism for brand spend in markets where you rank #1 organically.
Knowing what Brand vs non-brand means isn’t the edge.
Knowing what it’s doing to live accounts right now is. Operator notes from $200M+ in managed spend — sent when we find something worth your time.
Want to know what yours is?
The free audit reads your actual account and computes the numbers behind every one of these definitions — no generic benchmarks.
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