Google Analytics Separates Branded and Non-Branded Keywords

This week’s Marketing Tool of the Week is a new feature available in Google Analytics to help marketers better evaluate the performance of branded vs. non-branded pay-per-click keywords.

Branded and non-branded keywords have different goals, different strategies, and are analyzed differently to evaluate effectiveness. Until now, PPC managers couldn’t evaluate these two types of keywords separately in Analytics. Google’s newest Analytics feature helps to solve this problem.

How it Works

1. Login to Analytics and navigate to the Admin tab.
2. Under Channel Settings, click Manage Brand Terms.
3. Google suggests a list of terms that they have identified as your branded keywords. Go through this list to remove terms that don’t belong and add in terms that do.
4. Once this is setup, you will see your PPC traffic split into two distinct channels: Brand Paid Search and Generic Paid Search.

Pro-Tip: Include common misspellings of your company name or alternate names that people may use to search for your business. Consider adding common product and service names if people tend to search for those by name.

The branded terms distinction also applies to any other Paid Search advertising source in your Analytics account, including Bing Ads and social media advertising channels.