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Branded vs. non-branded: how much is just its name?

Hugo Pegley 3 min read

If most of a business’s search traffic is people typing its name, you are buying a phone number, not a marketing engine.

That sounds harsh, and it is not always a bad thing. But it changes what you are buying, and it is one of the easiest things to check before an LOI.

Branded searches include the business name. People who type it already know the company. They were referred, or used it before, or saw the truck. They are looking for the phone number, the hours or the website.

Non-branded searches are for the service. “Furnace repair near me”. “Tile cleaner in Mill Valley”. The person has a need and no particular company in mind. This is the traffic a marketing engine produces, and the traffic that does not depend on the owner being known.

How to find the split in three steps

  1. Ask for Search Console access. Google Search Console records the searches that led to the site. The seller can add you as a user with read access without handing over control. If they will not, that is information too
  2. Open the Performance report and set the range to the longest available. Search Console keeps about sixteen months
  3. Filter the queries. Add a query filter, choose custom regex, and exclude the business name and its common spellings. What remains is the non-branded traffic. Then compare clicks for each

A few cautions. Google leaves out rare, anonymized queries, so the totals are a floor and not a precise count. And the business name will be spelled in ways you did not think of, so scan the top queries and adjust the filter.

If you cannot get access

You can still get a rough read. Tools such as Semrush estimate the keywords a site ranks for. They are estimates, not measurements, and weaker for small local sites, so treat them as a sanity check. Look at whether the top keywords all contain the company name.

What the split means

I do not have a ratio that counts as good. A trades business with a century of word of mouth will legitimately be mostly branded. What matters is what sits behind the number.

  • Mostly branded, steady: loyal repeat customers and referrals. A real asset, but growth has to come from somewhere else
  • Mostly branded, falling: the base is shrinking and nothing is replacing it
  • A meaningful non-branded share: the business is found by strangers, so the leads do not all travel with the owner
  • Non-branded concentrated in a few terms: one service is carrying it. Ask what happens if it stops

What happens when the owner leaves

This is the question underneath the whole check. Branded demand follows the brand. If the brand is the company, it should mostly survive a handover. If the brand is the owner, whose name is on the van and who answered every call, some of the branded searches may leave with them.

Non-branded demand does not care who owns the business. It is the part of the traffic you can most safely assume you are buying.

Where to go next

Put the split next to what you saw in the 30-minute screen, then ask the seller where they think their leads come from. Compare it to what the data says. When it is worth a full report, that is what my SEO diligence covers.