---
title: "Brand traffic is flattering your agency report"
url: https://marketingsignals.com/insights/brand-traffic-is-flattering-your-agency-report
type: Article
date: 2026-11-02
author: "Laura Salini"
---

# Brand vs non-brand: brand traffic is flattering your agency report

Why blending brand vs non-brand search in agency reports overstates what the agency adds, and how to split paid and organic reporting to see real growth.

## Key takeaways

- Brand searches come from demand you have already built, so most of them would happen without any agency involved.
- A blended ROAS or organic traffic chart averages the easiest sale in the account with the hardest, and tells you about neither.
- Split brand and non-brand in paid and organic reporting, using brand exclusions in Google Ads and the branded queries filter in Search Console.
- Judge agencies on non-brand growth and new customers, and report brand separately as a measure of demand, with share of search alongside.
- Blended reporting is unfair in both directions: it hides a weak agency in a strong brand year and a good agency in a flat one.

Here is the easiest way to make a search agency look good: report brand and non-brand together. Brand searches convert at rates nothing else in the account can match, they cost little, and most of them would happen with no agency involved at all.

Blend them into one revenue line, one ROAS or one organic traffic chart, and the brand vs non-brand split that shows what the agency added disappears. The report goes up. It just is not reporting on the agency.

This is not an attack on agencies. Most blended reports come from platform defaults and from clients asking for one number. But if you sign off a search budget, you should know which part of the result your agency earned. This piece sets out why brand flatters every report, how to split the reporting and what to judge an agency on instead.

## Brand search is demand you already built

Someone who types your brand name into Google already knows you. That demand came from your product, your stores, your customer service, word of mouth, TV and years of trading. The agency's job on those searches is mostly not to lose them.

Brand search is a measure of demand you have already created. It is not proof that anyone created more of it this month.

That is why brand traffic flatters every report it touches. In paid search, brand clicks are cheap and convert well, so they lift the account's average return. In organic search, brand traffic rises with your Christmas trading, your TV burst and your PR coverage, whatever the SEO programme did. And in some sectors a large share of brand searches are existing customers looking for a login page or order tracking. Customers looking for your login page are not a marketing result.

## The three ways it creeps into reports

Blended ROAS is the first. A blended ROAS is an average of the easiest sale in the account and the hardest one, and it tells you about neither. Take a hypothetical account where brand campaigns return ten times their cost and non-brand returns three: the blend looks healthy even if non-brand is losing ground.

Performance Max is the second. Unless brand exclusions are applied, Performance Max can serve on searches for your own brand, and its results then include sales you would have won through your brand campaign or your organic listing. Google offers [brand exclusions for Performance Max and Search](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14505308?hl=en-GB), covering Search and Shopping inventory, precisely so advertisers can control this.

Organic traffic charts are the third. A chart of total organic clicks mixes brand and non-brand, so a strong brand year looks like SEO success. Paid and organic also compete on the same brand results page, which our note on [paid and organic overlap](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/paid-and-organic-overlap) explains.

## Why this is unfair to agencies too

Blended reporting is unfair in both directions. It hides a weak agency in a strong brand year, and it hides a good agency in a flat one. If your brand demand falls because a competitor is outspending you on TV, a blended report will blame the search agency for a problem it did not cause.

Brand work can also be real agency value. Defending your brand results page against competitors bidding on your name, keeping brand rankings through a site migration, and digital PR that gets people searching for you are all worth paying for. The point is to measure them as what they are, not to fold them into a conversion total.

## Brand vs non-brand: how we split the reporting

Splitting the reporting takes a few weeks to set up and then runs itself. These are the steps we follow.

1. Write down what counts as brand. That means your brand name and misspellings, product line names unique to you, and searches that combine your name with a category, such as your brand plus running shoes. We count those combined searches as brand, because the shopper already chose you.
2. Separate paid brand. Brand terms sit in their own Search campaigns, and we apply brand lists as exclusions to Performance Max and non-brand Search campaigns. We then check the [Performance Max search terms report](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/16327396) each month to see what still leaks through.
3. Separate organic brand. Search Console's [branded queries filter](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/11/search-console-branded-filter), launched in November 2025 and available to all eligible sites from March 2026, splits the Performance report into branded and non-branded queries. It uses an AI-assisted system that includes misspellings and unique product names, works only on top-level properties with enough search volume, and Google says it can misclassify some queries. Where it is not available, we filter by brand terms ourselves.
4. Tie organic to revenue honestly. Analytics cannot split organic revenue by query, so we use non-brand clicks from Search Console as the lead measure, and the revenue from category and product pages that mostly earn non-brand traffic as the commercial one.
5. Give brand its own page. The report shows brand as a demand measure, with brand search trends and [share of search](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/share-of-search) against named competitors, kept apart from the performance the agency is judged on.

## What to judge an agency on instead

Non-brand is where search growth has to be won. Non-brand SEO and non-brand paid search reach people who have not yet decided to buy from you, which is the part of the result an agency can genuinely claim. We would put these at the top of any monthly report.

- Non-brand clicks, conversions and revenue, paid and organic, shown separately.
- Non-brand visibility on the categories that make the most profit.
- New customers acquired through search, from your own order or CRM data where possible.
- Paid brand spend, with the result of the latest [incrementality test](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/incrementality-testing) on it.
- Brand demand and share of search, reported as context rather than agency performance.

## What to tell the board

For the board, the change is mostly one of framing. Instead of one search revenue figure, show two: brand revenue, which moves with the business's overall demand, and non-brand revenue, which moves with search activity. Put new customers from search beside them.

The first report after the split often looks worse than the ones before it. That is not a fall in performance. It is the removal of a flattering average, and it is worth telling the board so before the report lands. From then on, leadership can see whether search is growing the business or only collecting demand that was already there, and budget decisions get easier because each pound is judged against the right baseline.

## New customers are the honest number

If one measure had to replace blended revenue, we would choose new customers. A returning customer who searches your name to reorder is not something an agency created. A first-time buyer who found you through a category search usually is.

Google Ads can help here. Its [customer acquisition goal](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14008174?hl=en-GB) lets Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns bid higher for new customers, or only for new customers, using your customer lists and conversion tags to tell them apart. Your own order data is still the final word, because it sees every channel.

For paid brand specifically, the right question is what the spend protects. We set out how to answer it in our [brand bidding incrementality test](https://marketingsignals.com/insights/brand-bidding-incrementality-test), which holds brand ads off in some regions or periods and compares total sales. Some brands find the spend is earning its place. Others find much of it is buying clicks their organic listing would have won.

## When a blended view is fine

Not every business needs this split. A new brand with almost no brand search has little to flatter the report, and a business that only runs non-brand campaigns already has a clean view. It matters most where brand demand is large, seasonal or moved by other marketing, which covers most established retailers, lenders and B2B firms. Our playbooks for [e-commerce](https://marketingsignals.com/playbooks/the-e-commerce-visibility-playbook), [B2B lead generation](https://marketingsignals.com/playbooks/the-visibility-playbook-for-b2b-lead-generation) and [fintech](https://marketingsignals.com/playbooks/the-visibility-playbook-for-fintech) cover how the split works in each.

## Questions to ask your agency

- What share of our search revenue last quarter came from brand terms, paid and organic?
- Is Performance Max excluded from our brand searches, and how do you check?
- How did non-brand clicks and revenue move over the last 12 months, with brand taken out?
- How many new customers did search bring in, and how do you know they were new?
- Have we tested whether our paid brand spend is incremental?

## The fairest report is the one that could look worse

The fairest report an agency can send is one that could make it look worse. An agency confident in its non-brand work should want brand taken out, because it shows the work clearly. We report brand and non-brand separately as standard in our [integrated search](https://marketingsignals.com/service/integrated-search) work, and we think every client should ask for the same. For more on what a useful agency report contains, see [measure your agency on revenue, not rankings](https://marketingsignals.com/insights/measure-your-agency-on-revenue-not-rankings).

## Frequently asked questions

### What is the difference between brand and non-brand search?

Brand searches include your company or product names, misspellings of them, or your name combined with a category. Non-brand searches describe a need or product without naming you, such as a category or problem. Brand searchers already know you and convert at high rates, while non-brand searchers have not chosen yet. Reporting them separately shows how much growth comes from reaching new demand.

### Why should agencies report brand and non-brand separately?

Brand searches mostly reflect demand the business already built, and they convert far better than non-brand. When the two are blended, brand lifts the averages and hides how non-brand is performing, which is where an agency adds most value. A split report shows whether the agency is growing new demand and stops a strong or weak brand year distorting the picture in either direction.

### How do I see branded and non-branded queries in Google Search Console?

Search Console added a branded queries filter in November 2025 and made it available to all eligible sites in March 2026. It sits in the Performance report and splits queries into branded and non-branded using an AI-assisted system that includes misspellings. It only works on top-level properties with enough search volume, and Google says some queries may be misclassified. Otherwise, filter queries by your brand terms.

### How do I stop Performance Max taking credit for brand searches?

Apply brand exclusions to the Performance Max campaign using a brand list. Google says exclusions cover Search and Shopping inventory in Performance Max, with an option to let Shopping ads still appear on excluded brand searches. Run brand terms in a separate Search campaign, then check the Performance Max search terms report regularly to see which searches still trigger it.

### What should I measure instead of blended ROAS?

Measure non-brand revenue and ROAS separately for paid and organic search, new customers acquired through search, and the incremental value of paid brand spend from a holdout test. Report brand demand and share of search as context rather than as agency performance. Those numbers show what the agency adds and give leadership a clearer basis for budget decisions.

## Sources

- [Google Search Central blog: Introducing the branded queries filter in Search Console](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/11/search-console-branded-filter)
- [Google Ads Help: Apply brand exclusions to Performance Max or Search campaigns](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14505308?hl=en-GB)
- [Google Ads Help: About customer acquisition goals](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14008174?hl=en-GB)
- [Google Ads Help: About the search terms report in Performance Max](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/16327396)

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