What is Share of Search (SoS)?

eCommerce business is inherently anonymous, with customers hidden behind laptops and online payment systems instead of being face-to-face with a team member in a store, with a competitor business just across the street. As a result, it can be difficult to tell which of you is getting the most business and how your customers behave.

One key metric gaining traction among marketers and business leaders is Share of Search (SoS), a simple yet powerful way to measure consumer interest, competitor performance and brand momentum online.

Whether you’re looking to track brand health, validate marketing strategies or stay ahead of the competition, Share of Search is an essential KPI worth adding to your marketing toolkit.

Why should my business care about Share of Search?

What’s the difference between Share of Search, Share of Voice and Share of Market?

How to measure your business’s Share of Search

How to improve your business’s Share of Search

Applying Share of Search to your marketing strategy

Important things to remember

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Why should my business care about Share of Search?

Share of Search has become a valuable tool for brands and marketers because it offers real-time insight into consumer interest.

Unlike traditional measures, such as brand awareness surveys, SoS uses actual online behaviour, showing what users are actively looking for. This makes it a reliable way to understand how your brand performs in consumers’ minds.

But what benefits can tracking another KPI (this one specifically) offer?

Early indicator of brand health

Share of Search can act as an early warning system for changes in brand strength. If your SoS is rising, it often means more people are interested in your brand, possibly before you see sales or market share changes.

Tracks marketing effectiveness

By monitoring SoS before, during and after marketing campaigns, you can see if your efforts are making a difference and driving more interest in your brand.

Competitive benchmarking

SoS lets you see how your business is performing against competitors over time. This helps identify market leaders, giving you a clearer picture of your position in the market. It can also help you adjust strategy if needed.

Fast and cost-effective

Gathering search data is often quicker and less expensive than running large-scale surveys or focus groups. This allows brands to get insights more frequently and adjust their strategies faster.

Reflects real consumer intent

Since it’s based on what people are searching for, SoS captures genuine interest and intent, rather than just opinions or recall.

Share of Search is a powerful, practical tool that can help your brand stay informed, make smart, data-driven decisions, and stay ahead of the competition.

What’s the difference between Share of Search, Share of Voice and Share of Market?

If you’ve heard of Share of Search, you may have heard of Share of Voice (SoV) and Share of Market (SoM) – but what’s the difference?

As we’ve already covered, Share of Search is based on the volume of online searches for a brand within its category. It reflects genuine consumer interest by showing what people are searching for online.

Share of Voice is about how much presence or visibility your brand has compared to competitors, usually in advertising or media coverage. Traditionally, SoV measures the amount of paid advertising your brand ran versus others in the same category.

There are two types of Share of Voice: classic and organic. Classic SoV relates to the exposure gained through paid media, while organic SoV occurs through (as the name suggests) organic actions, such as customer reviews or social media mentions. Both types reflect how much a brand is being talked about or noticed. Still, they capture different channels and types of attention (making it a particularly useful metric in the PR industry).

However, Share of Market is the most direct business metric – the percentage of total sales in a category your brand holds. SoM shows how much of the market’s actual revenue or unit sales your brand has made. This number is a key indicator of business success.

Here’s a table to break down their differences at a glance:

	Share of Search	Share of Voice	Share of Market
Core question	How much interest is there in our brand versus competitors online?	How visible is our brand compared to competitors in media or advertising?	How much of the category’s sales does our brand capture?
What’s measured	Number of online searches for the brand in a category	Brand’s presence in paid and/or organic media	Actual sales volume or value for the brand
How it’s measured	Search engine data (such as Google Trends, keyword tools)	Media spend, impressions or share of mentions (paid and organic channels)	Sales reports, retail data, industry market research
The calculation	(Brand’s searches × 100%) / total category searches	(Brand’s media presence × 100%) / total category media presence	(Brand’s sales × 100%) / total category sales
How often	Monthly or more frequently (depending on data availability)	Monthly or quarterly (or campaign-specific)	Quarterly or annually (often tied to sales cycles)
Who owns it	Marketing, digital or insights/analytics team	Marketing, media or PR team	Sales, finance or business Intelligence team

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How to measure your business’s Share of Search

You’ll need to open your digital toolbox to measure a metric like Share of Search.

Two tools we regularly use for both our clients and our own business are Semrush’s Keyword Overview and Google Trends, as both can provide us with detailed brand search volume data.

Semrush’s Keyword Overview tool offers precise insights into the monthly search volume for specific brand names and related keywords. By entering your brand and competitor names, you can easily compare how often each is being searched for over a given period.

This data can be easily exported to add to reports and be tracked over time to monitor changes in interest.

Google Trends, on the other hand, is excellent for visualising search interest over time and comparing multiple brands side-by-side.

It shows the relative popularity of search terms, allowing you to see spikes, dips and long-term trends. While it doesn’t provide exact search volume numbers like Semrush does, it’s especially useful for spotting patterns and understanding seasonality, or estimating the impact of a marketing campaign during the ideation process.

Calculating Share of Search

After you’ve gathered your data, you can then calculate your business’s Share of Search using the following simple formula:

Share of Search = (brand’s searches × 100%) / total category searches

For example, if there are 1,000 searches for all brands of wine, and 300 of them are for your wine brand, your SoS calculation would look like:

(300 x 100%) / 1000 = 30%

This means your brand accounts for 30% of all searches in that category.

Analysing Share of Search

Although the SoS calculation can be incredibly helpful, it doesn’t provide the valuable insights that your business may need for a deeper analysis. At this point, you could also consider calculating your brand’s momentum and category penetration.

Calculating your brand’s momentum involves looking at how your brand’s search volume increases and decreases each month and how your momentum compares to your competitors’. This data could reveal interesting patterns based on searcher behaviour that could inform your future brand strategies.

For example, over a six-month period, your business’s search traffic increases from 75k to 100k, which is 33% growth. One of your competitors’ search traffic jumped from 35k to 65k over that same period (85% growth). Although you have more search traffic than they do, your competitor’s momentum is higher, which could be a sign that they’re one to watch.

Category penetration involves calculating the percentage of people within a target market who have purchased or used a product from a specific category within a particular period. It can help you understand how widely a product category is adopted among potential customers.

Here’s how to calculate your brand’s category penetration:

Category penetration (%) = (Branded search volume ÷ Total category search volume) × 100

So if your brand had 8k branded searches per month, but the total monthly search for your category was 50k, your brand gets 16% of all category interest.

If your branded search traffic is high, but your category penetration is low, that could indicate your brand doesn’t have much reach outside your base.

How to improve your business’s Share of Search

Effectively boosting your Share of Search requires several things, such as smart marketing, strong brand presence, and ongoing engagement.

Here are some practical ways a business can improve its SoS:

• Invest in strong brand campaigns: run memorable advertising that drives interest and encourages people to search for your brand by name.
• Enhance your SEO strategy: optimise your website and content for branded keywords to help bring your brand to the top of SEPS.
• Create engaging content: publish relevant, shareable content that encourages engagement and organic searches.
• Leverage social media: use social platforms to spark conversations, promote campaigns and increase brand awareness that guides more online traffic to you.
• Respond to market trends: quickly adapt your messaging or offerings to capitalise on emerging topics or consumer interests.
• Encourage positive PR and partnerships: earn media coverage and collaborate with influencers or other brands to reach new audiences and drive search interest.
• Monitor and act on customer feedback: address concerns and highlight positive reviews to build trust and encourage more people to look up your brand.

Together, these actions could set your business on the path to outmanoeuvre your competitors and cement your position in the market.

Applying Share of Search to your marketing strategy

Share of Search data can provide your marketing team with valuable insights to help them build more effective marketing strategies.

Here are three ways you can make your SoS data work for your business:

Tracking brand momentum

Incorporating Share of Search into your marketing strategy lets you monitor your brand’s momentum in the market in real time. By regularly monitoring SoS, you can quickly spot whether consumer interest in your brand is growing or declining.

This approach helps you react faster to market changes, capitalising on positive trends or addressing issues before they escalate.

Validating your strategy ideas early

One of the biggest advantages of SoS is its ability to provide early feedback on new marketing initiatives.

Instead of waiting months to see the results in sales figures, you can use shifts in SoS as an early signal that your campaigns or messaging are resonating with consumers. If you see an immediate uptick in online searches after launching a new ad or promotion, it’s a good indication your strategy is hitting the mark.

Monitoring long-term brand impact

Share of Search isn’t just for short-term tracking – it’s also valuable for assessing your brand’s health over time. By observing trends in SoS across months or years, you can understand the lasting effects of your marketing efforts and brand-building activities.

Steady growth in SoS may indicate increasing brand awareness and preference, while declines could signal a need to refresh your approach.

Important things to remember

While Share of Search is a powerful and insightful metric, it’s essential to approach it with perspective.

Improving your SoS can lead to valuable brand growth, but it’s not always a direct path to increased sales or market share. Keeping these key points in mind will help you make the most of this metric and set realistic expectations for your efforts:

• Not every branded search has sales intent: some searches are from people researching, looking for customer service, or those who are just curious.
• It’s best viewed alongside other metrics: combine Share of Search data with sales, market share and brand health metrics for a full picture.
• External factors can also affect it: news events, competitor activity or viral trends can influence search behaviour.
• Results may take time: building a meaningful Share of Search is a long-term effort – don’t expect overnight shifts!
• Consistency matters: regular, high-quality marketing and brand activity are key to maintaining and growing your Share of Search.

By keeping these points in mind, you can use Share of Search as a valuable guide, staying realistic about its limits while leveraging its insights to improve your brand’s online presence and impact steadily.

Are you ready to seriously consider Share of Search as part of your digital marketing strategy, but unsure where to begin? Book a free consultation with us today, and let’s discuss how we can work together to boost your business’s online standing.