Integrated search glossary

Share of search

Share of search is a brand's search volume as a percentage of the total searches for every brand in its category, usually measured with Google Trends. Les Binet presented it in 2020 as a cheap, fast metric that tracks a brand's market share and can predict where that share is heading.

Reviewed by Gareth Hoyle, Managing Director
Last reviewed 31 October 2026

Where does the metric come from?

Les Binet presented share of search at the IPA's EffWorks Global conference on 14 October 2020. Using free Google Trends data, he showed that a brand's share of search queries correlated with its market share in three categories: cars, energy and mobile phone handsets. Changes in share of search tended to come first, by up to a year in the car market.

The metric counts searches people make for brand names. It has nothing to do with paid search ads or with where a brand ranks.

What has research found since?

An IPA think tank reported in October 2021 on 30 case studies across 12 categories and seven countries. On average, share of search represented 83% of a brand's share of market, though the ratio varied by category and country. The think tank stressed that the findings are correlations, not proof of cause, and recommended a 6 to 12 month rolling average to smooth the data.

How to measure it

Fix a competitor set and keep it the same over time
Include common misspellings and shortened brand names
Use one data source, such as Google Trends, for every brand
Report a rolling average rather than single weeks
Watch for spikes caused by bad news, which raise searches without raising demand

Example

Three UK mattress brands get 40,000, 25,000 and 15,000 searches a month for their names. The first has a 50% share of search. If its share drifts to 44% over a year while a rival's TV campaign lifts that rival from 31% to 37%, the IPA's research suggests the leader's market share may follow.