What do branded queries mean?
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2025 8:56 am
Contextual advertising, as is known, is based on correctly selected key queries. The user, filling in the search engine line, enters phrases that most accurately reflect his needs for information, goods and services.
In response to the received request, the robot shows a list of relevant links, as well as advertiser blocks that can satisfy these needs. Among the general mass of search phrases, branded queries stand out especially. What advantages they provide for website promotion, we will analyze in our article.
From English, brand is translated marketing list of senior homes as "brand". Marketers use the word "brand" to mean "trademark". Despite the many different definitions, the essence of this concept is simple: a brand is considered to be a specific feature inherent to a specific manufacturer, thanks to which consumers can easily distinguish its products from competitors' offerings. This can be a symbol, a logo, a combination of colors - in a word, anything that allows a company to become recognizable.
If a person types "buy a tracksuit" into a search engine, he is using a regular commercial query. But if the company name is added to this phrase ("buy a Nike tracksuit"), the query immediately becomes a brand query. It confirms the consumer's desire to buy a product from a specific manufacturer and their loyalty to this particular brand.
However, promotion by such key phrases has opponents who, not without reason, believe that a company occupying top positions in organic search results does not need advertising by branded queries. Moreover, it wastes its budget, because it does not complain about the lack of advertising clicks. Why pay for brand promotion?
That's right, these queries are pulling some share of organic transitions, but at the same time they will contribute to the increase in traffic. It is difficult to predict the specific results of such distribution, they are influenced by many factors, but the general trend can be deduced based on the results of large-scale studies.
Bing conducted one of them in 2014, analyzing 3 million search results.
The conclusion reached by Bing specialists confirmed the validity of promotion by branded queries: the advertiser received 31% additional clicks, while the loss of its own organic search results amounted to only 11%.
Branded queries
Source: KT Stock photos / shutterstock.com
The effectiveness of brand advertising is measured not only by the number of clicks, but also by some qualitative indicators:
High CTR due to loyal audience . This is explained simply: a person who wanted to find a product of a certain brand, in almost 100% of cases clicks on its banner.
Media traffic growth . Contextual advertising for brand queries contributes to the growth of recognition, while the budget of such a campaign is much smaller than in the search network, as is the CTR.
Low rates . Low competition for such keywords makes them quite cheap. In addition, Google Ads provides high quality and relevance indicators for them. From an economic point of view, the effectiveness of promotion for branded queries is such that it easily covers the loss of some of the transitions in organic search results.
Ability to show up for misspelled queries . Up to 20% of users may enter a brand name with errors. If you don’t take this into account when developing an advertising campaign, clients who make typos will not get to the site.
An important concept to consider when promoting a brand is traffic cannibalization.
Based on its impact on the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, it can be classified into one of three types:
Destructive : The loss of clicks from organic traffic exceeded the number of additional ones received from branded queries.
Constructive : paid clicks brought in more visitors than were lost in organic search results.
Reinforcing : As a result of contextual advertising, the number of organic clicks increased.
In response to the received request, the robot shows a list of relevant links, as well as advertiser blocks that can satisfy these needs. Among the general mass of search phrases, branded queries stand out especially. What advantages they provide for website promotion, we will analyze in our article.
From English, brand is translated marketing list of senior homes as "brand". Marketers use the word "brand" to mean "trademark". Despite the many different definitions, the essence of this concept is simple: a brand is considered to be a specific feature inherent to a specific manufacturer, thanks to which consumers can easily distinguish its products from competitors' offerings. This can be a symbol, a logo, a combination of colors - in a word, anything that allows a company to become recognizable.
If a person types "buy a tracksuit" into a search engine, he is using a regular commercial query. But if the company name is added to this phrase ("buy a Nike tracksuit"), the query immediately becomes a brand query. It confirms the consumer's desire to buy a product from a specific manufacturer and their loyalty to this particular brand.
However, promotion by such key phrases has opponents who, not without reason, believe that a company occupying top positions in organic search results does not need advertising by branded queries. Moreover, it wastes its budget, because it does not complain about the lack of advertising clicks. Why pay for brand promotion?
That's right, these queries are pulling some share of organic transitions, but at the same time they will contribute to the increase in traffic. It is difficult to predict the specific results of such distribution, they are influenced by many factors, but the general trend can be deduced based on the results of large-scale studies.
Bing conducted one of them in 2014, analyzing 3 million search results.
The conclusion reached by Bing specialists confirmed the validity of promotion by branded queries: the advertiser received 31% additional clicks, while the loss of its own organic search results amounted to only 11%.
Branded queries
Source: KT Stock photos / shutterstock.com
The effectiveness of brand advertising is measured not only by the number of clicks, but also by some qualitative indicators:
High CTR due to loyal audience . This is explained simply: a person who wanted to find a product of a certain brand, in almost 100% of cases clicks on its banner.
Media traffic growth . Contextual advertising for brand queries contributes to the growth of recognition, while the budget of such a campaign is much smaller than in the search network, as is the CTR.
Low rates . Low competition for such keywords makes them quite cheap. In addition, Google Ads provides high quality and relevance indicators for them. From an economic point of view, the effectiveness of promotion for branded queries is such that it easily covers the loss of some of the transitions in organic search results.
Ability to show up for misspelled queries . Up to 20% of users may enter a brand name with errors. If you don’t take this into account when developing an advertising campaign, clients who make typos will not get to the site.
An important concept to consider when promoting a brand is traffic cannibalization.
Based on its impact on the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, it can be classified into one of three types:
Destructive : The loss of clicks from organic traffic exceeded the number of additional ones received from branded queries.
Constructive : paid clicks brought in more visitors than were lost in organic search results.
Reinforcing : As a result of contextual advertising, the number of organic clicks increased.