Share of Search: discover a new way of measuring campaigns

The Share of Search metric is currently an excellent alternative to Share of Voice. More and more brands use this metric to measure campaign effectiveness and stay ahead of the competition. In this article we have summarised everything essential you need to know about this metric. 

What does the Share of Search metric express?

Share of Search expresses the share of searches for a particular brand in the total number of searches for competing brands in an industry.

This metric can be a reliable indicator of market share as well as an indicator of a brand's health. If a larger number of users search for your brand, you will very likely also achieve higher sales. Most users search for a brand when they are planning to buy its product. 

Share of Search resembles market share in many respects. The difference is that market share looks at the actual share of sales or revenue in relation to the total market, whereas Share of Search deals with search volume.

Share of Search versus market share

Market share is the most common and most apt metric used in analysing brand awareness. It is the percentage of total industry revenue generated by a particular company. You calculate it by taking a company's revenue over a certain period and dividing it by the whole industry's total revenue for the same period.

Generally it is hard to quantify a company's exact market share, because estimating a company's sales is demanding. It is likewise ever harder to distinguish who is in the same industry as your company and who is not. 

Market share is, though, a metric that is created only over time through many different inputs such as turnover, product development, brand initiatives and so on.

Share of Search versus Share of Voice

Before online advertising came along, Share of Voice was the metric that predicted success in the market. Share of Voice is the share of one brand's advertising spend compared with total advertising spend in the given industry. 

Careful! You can calculate Share of Voice only if you know the total advertising spend in your industry. 

Share of Search is built on the same principle as Share of Voice. The difference is that SoS tracks the real search demand for a given brand and not advertising spend. 

Why track it?

Calculating and tracking Share of Search instead of Share of Voice brings several advantages. These advantages gain in importance with changes in consumer behaviour and the growing volume of online advertising. 

1. Simple calculation

The calculation is not demanding - you only have to obtain data on brand search volumes and put it into the formula. You can get the data easily through Google Trends, for instance. 

2. More reliable results

Measuring Share of Search lets you track users who have a genuine interest in your brand and search for it. 

3. Universal applicability 

Share of Search can be applied in industries where advertising is not an important element too.

Drawbacks

• Watch out for scandals - Share of Search assumes users search for a brand with the aim of buying its products. That is not always so. An example may be when a brand is part of a scandal. 

• An ambiguous brand name - when a search query contains the brand's name but the brand is not the main reason for the search. An example may be when a brand is called "...."

• Misinterpreting the data - Share of Search is not an indicator we should track over a short time horizon. A moving average is therefore recommended when calculating it. With Share of Search it is worth tracking the trend and the metric's long-term direction.

The calculation

For the calculation you will need to obtain data on search demand for your brand and competing brands in your industry. We recommend collecting data over a longer period. Then you only have to put the data into the formula:

SoS = the number of searches for your brand ÷ the number of searches for all competitors in the industry

If you want to calculate your brand's share of search, simply take the number of organic searches your brand recorded in a certain period and then divide it by the number of searches all brands in your industry recorded in that time.

Do not forget to include large and small brands alike in the calculations. When gathering search volumes for individual brands, do not forget to change the location to the market you operate in either.

It is good to calculate your share of search monthly. If you have only just started tracking it, though, you can also dive into historical search data and analyse your past performance. If you notice a surprising rise, you may be able to find out what happened and repeat it in your current strategy.

Tips on improving your share of search

The more people know of or know your brand, the more searches you will get. An excellent way to raise brand awareness is television advertising. But any other marketing activity that can raise interest in your brand will help too. Influencer marketing is very popular at present. Publishing PR articles and in some cases even old-fashioned billboards can also help raise your brand's share of search and ultimately your market share too.

In this article we have introduced a metric used in online marketing. I believe you liked the article and will use it in your business too.