Measurement. Reviewed October 29, 2026
Non-brand search
Also called: Non-branded traffic, Branded vs non-branded
Non-brand search is any query that does not include the business's own name, so non-brand clicks are the clearest measure of whether marketing, rather than reputation, is bringing in new customers.
In practice
Brand searches come from people who already heard of the company: a referral, a truck, a yard sign. Non-brand searches come from strangers. A site with 500 clicks a month that are all the company name is not winning new business from Google.
In Search Console, filter queries to exclude the business name and watch that number month over month.
Related terms
- Google Search ConsoleGoogle Search Console is Google's free report of how a site performs in search: which queries show it, how many clicks and impressions it earns, which pages are indexed and what errors Google found.
- ImpressionsAn impression is one appearance of a page or ad in search results or on a screen, counted whether or not anyone clicked it.
- Click-through rateClick-through rate is clicks divided by impressions, and in search it rises steeply with position: a first-place result earns many times the clicks of a tenth-place one.
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