Every account we inherit has a branded search campaign posting the best numbers in the account. Eight, twelve, twenty times return. It is also, reliably, the least incremental line in the budget.
What branded search actually does
Someone types your company name. They already know who you are, which means something else in your marketing did the work: a van, a neighbour, a mailer, a Meta ad, a job sign. Branded search is the last touch before the click, and last touch gets all the credit in most reporting.
That does not make it worthless. It makes it unmeasured, which is different, and much more expensive.
The test that settles it
Pause branded search for a defined period and watch total conversions from branded terms, paid plus organic combined. If total volume holds roughly steady while paid spend goes to zero, organic absorbed the demand and you were paying for clicks you would have received free.
- 01Run it for at least two full weeks, ideally four, to cover weekly seasonality.
- 02Measure total branded conversions, never just the paid line, or you will conclude the obvious and learn nothing.
- 03Watch impression share on your brand terms. A competitor moving in changes the answer.
- 04Repeat it once or twice a year, because the answer changes with your brand awareness and the competitive set.
What to do with the finding
If branded search turns out to be mostly harvesting, you have two options and both are improvements. Reallocate the spend to genuinely incremental inventory, or keep it but stop counting its revenue toward the performance of your acquisition programme, because doing so inflates the whole account and hides the real efficiency of everything else.
The second option is more common than the first, and it is the one that quietly corrects a lot of bad budget decisions.