Skip to content
GetProfit
Log in

← All terms

Branded search

Branded search is the set of search queries that contain your store's name or the names of your own brands, alone or with other words.

How it works

Someone who types your store’s name is already looking for you. The ad reaches a buyer who has chosen you, and some of these sales could have come through the free search result for your name. A test with brand ads switched off shows how many sales the ads add. A campaign serving both brand and category searches reports one ROAS for both, and the brand share can hide how the rest performs.

Performance Max can also serve on searches for your name unless you add your brand to its brand exclusions. Since January 2025 a retailer can apply brand exclusions to Search text ads only and keep Shopping ads on brand searches. When each option makes sense is covered in brand exclusions in Google Ads.

Where you see it

In the search terms report, as the queries that contain your store’s name or your own brands. Google added this report to Performance Max in 2025.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop’s Performance Max campaign spends 40,000 a month and brings in 180,000 of revenue: a ROAS of 4.5. Suppose searches with the shop’s name took 4,000 of the spend and brought 60,000: a ROAS of 15. All other searches took 36,000 and brought 120,000: a ROAS of 3.33. The overall 4.5 describes neither part.

Not to be confused with

  • Brand bidding — other advertisers, such as affiliates, resellers or competitors, bidding on your name. Branded search is the queries themselves, whoever bids on them. For affiliates, see affiliates bidding on your brand name.
  • Brand — the feed attribute that names the product’s maker. A search for a maker whose goods you resell is a product search, not branded search for your store.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “Our Performance Max ROAS is 4.5, so every unit spent on people who weren’t looking for us brings 4.5.” Right: in the example, searches without the shop’s name return 3.33; the 4.5 also counts searches for the shop’s name.

Sources