Brand Search
Searches that include your firm or trade name.
Brand search is the volume of searches on Google, Bing or other engines that include the firm's name, trading name, adviser names or distinctive proposition. It is the most reliable non-survey measure of brand salience and the single most important SEO metric for a financial adviser firm.
Brand search is tracked in Google Search Console under "Queries" by filtering for the brand term and its variants. It is the cheapest traffic a firm receives (near-zero CPC on brand-defence Google Ads) and the highest-converting (brand searchers are 4 to 7 times more likely to book a discovery call than non-brand searchers).
For adviser firms, brand search compounds slowly with consistent investment in content, PR, podcast appearances, client referrals, and paid-media impressions that spill into organic recall. A firm with 300 branded monthly searches will typically grow to 600-plus within 12 months of consistent activity, and to 1,500-plus within 24 to 36 months.
Branded-search defence campaigns on Google Ads are a contested topic. The case for running them: competitors (especially SJP, True Potential and consolidators) bid on branded terms and steal clicks; a branded defence ad costs £0.05 to £0.40 per click and recaptures that traffic. The case against: bidding on your own brand can cannibalise organic clicks you would have received anyway. Most advice firms above £20k monthly spend run brand defence; firms below that threshold often do not.
See also: direct traffic, share-of-voice, branded queries, SERP defence.