“Branded searches” are a new conversion type that shows the number of searches users made for your brand on Google and YouTube after viewing your ads. They can help you measure how well your campaigns drive consideration for your brand among potential and existing customers. Branded searches are available for YouTube and Demand Gen campaigns
On this page
- Benefits of branded searches
- How branded searches work
- Branded searches as a Consideration goal
- Eligibility and requirements
Benefits of branded searches
Branded searches can help you maximize the impact of your campaigns:
- Measure brand interest and consideration: You can track how your campaigns generated user interest in your brand, even if users don’t immediately convert.
- Inform your campaign budget: Branded searches can help you anticipate future conversions and sales - and give you more information when allocating budgets and ad spend.
- Easy integration: This feature is built directly into Google Ads, making it easy to understand the performance of your campaigns with minimal setup.
- Always on: Branded searches are always on, meaning you don’t need to run a Search Lift experiment to access the feature.
How branded searches work
Branded searches track the number of searches users make within 7 days of viewing eligible ads. Branded searches use last click, view-through conversion attribution, meaning that the last ad the user viewed will receive credit for the conversion.
To access branded searches:
- Go to Summary within the Goals menu
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- Scroll down to view “Branded Searches” under the “Consideration” goal.
.Branded searches can also be accessed through the “All conv.” and “Results” columns in the following reports:
- Campaign level reports
- Ad Group level reports
- Asset level reports
To view branded searches in the Campaigns table:
- Go to Campaigns.
- Add the “All conv.” column to the "Campaigns" table.
- Select Segment above the table.
- Under “Conversions”, select Conversion action.
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Select the “All conv.” and “Results” columns to view your conversions for the “Branded searches” conversion action.
- You can view branded searches under the "Results" and "All Conversions" columns. However, branded searches won’t appear in the “Conversions” column, which is only used for conversions that are used in bidding.
- If the "All conversions" column shows zero branded searches, add the "View-through conversions" and "Results" columns to your Campaigns table.
Branded searches as a Consideration goal
Branded searches are currently reporting-only and can’t be used in bidding optimization for your campaigns. The conversion action will be set as “Primary”, but the “Consideration” goal can't be added to a campaign for optimization. You will find branded searches in the All conv. column, not the Conversions column.
Example
You may have 2 separate campaigns running in your account for the same brand:
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Campaign #1: focused on marketing a product specifically
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Campaign #2: a more general brand campaign
A user views 2 YouTube ads, one triggered by Campaign #1 (about a specific product) and the other triggered by Campaign #2 (about the broader product’s brand). Within 7 days of viewing both ads, the user performs a search for “specific product deals.”
Since the user viewed the specific product’s ad from Campaign #1 last, the last ad viewed will receive credit for the branded search, even though the user had also viewed the general brand ad in Campaign #2.
The system will attribute the branded search to only one campaign (in this case, Campaign #1), even though both campaigns were involved in the user’s path to conversion.
Additionally, the lookback window for this attribution is 7 days by default, but advertisers can edit it to be anywhere between one and 30 days.
Eligibility and requirements
To get started with branded searches, you’ll need to meet the following eligibility requirements:
- Eligible campaign types: YouTube and Demand Gen campaigns.
- Brand mapping: Make sure brand mapping is configured for accurate attribution.
Enablement
Follow these steps to set up branded searches as a conversion action:
- First, work with your sales representative to get brand mapping set up for your account.
- After brand mapping has been set up successfully, it may take up to 7 days for branded searches to reflect on your conversions page and campaign reports. If brand search activity isn't appearing, some common causes can be poor creatives, overly narrow audiences, low search volume, and unsupported campaign type.
- Check reporting to view how your campaigns are driving branded searches.
