When doing Google Ads audits, many advertisers are completely unaware that Google is artificially inflating the performance of their campaigns by blending branded search terms (e.g. 'Apple iPhone' versus a generic industry term such as 'smartphone') into ostensibly non-branded campaigns/ad groups. Sometimes this happens because of the use of broad keywords or automated campaign types (and Google is at no pain to point out what is happening as it is in their best interests to make performance look as good as possible). Sometimes - unfortunately enough - it occurs because agencies/freelancers/employees are instructing Google to do this in order to mask underlying performance deficiencies elsewhere in the account, and because they know that most businesses will only look at top-level metrics e.g. account/campaign level performance.

The purpose of this page is not to argue for or against brand term advertising in Google Ads. There are arguments both ways - but only when the brand advertising is "deliberate" (i.e. you have set up a specific campaign for branded advertising, and it is blocked elsewhere).

Hidden brand search advertising is a problem because it makes proper interpretation of your Google Ads performance more challenging, and ultimately I find that the vast majority of advertisers simply aren't aware of this phenomenon.

You can be sitting there thinking your ads are performing well, when in reality much of the supposed good performance is actually you paying Google to take credit for customers who were going to buy from you anyway.

Somebody who is searching for your brand or product by name has to have heard about your business/product elsewhere. Capturing this existing brand demand is very different to using Google Ads to reach fresh prospective customers who aren't aware of your brand. Those searching for your brand will almost always convert at a much higher rate, and typically click costs are much lower, click rates significantly higher, and performance from "brand demand capture" is not remotely comparable to trying to convert cold/unaware prospects via Google Ads.

You can learn more here about the importance of understanding the impacts of hidden brand search (and what to do about it).

To use the tool, all you need to do is download a simple CSV file from your Google Ads account, upload it, and then enter your brand terms for a report that shows you just how much of your spend, clicks, impressions and conversions come from branded terms.

You can view more detailed instructions here if required.

NB: This tool cannot access or interpret "other"/not-provided search term data. The purpose of this tool is to give you a good sense of the impact of branded term performance on your Google Ads advertising, but due to limitations in the data Google provides you as an advertiser, there are limitations to what the tool can do.