Brand Demand Scan · Methodology

Attribution reports miss
the buyers who never
visit your site

Attribution reports count the buyers who arrived on your site and credit a channel for each of them. They do not count the buyers who searched, saw your business in the results and chose a competitor, because those buyers never arrived. Brand Demand Scan (BDS) counts them from your Search Console export.

The core problem

Attribution starts counting when
a buyer arrives on your site

Attribution models start their measurement when a buyer enters a tracked session on your site. This holds for last-click, first-click, linear and data-driven models alike. Everything the buyer did before that session is outside the report: the searches, the results the buyer saw and the businesses the buyer compared without clicking anything.

Take two businesses. The first appeared in 40,000 category searches last quarter and received 0.3 per cent of that visibility as demand. The second did no content work and only received buyers who arrived already decided. Both reports show the same channel credit. The first business is leaking 99.7 per cent of its demand, and the report cannot show it.

What this means for spending

When a report credits only the buyers who arrived, the natural response is to spend more on the channels that appear to perform. That spend reaches the buyers who were already coming. The demand that leaks to competitors stays outside every report. Brand Demand Scan measures it from your Search Console export.

Structural comparison

Attribution and Brand Demand Scan count different things

The table compares what an attribution report counts with what Brand Demand Scan counts. Each row names one difference.

Question
Attribution report
Brand Demand Scan
What is counted
Buyers who arrived on your site, credited to a channel
The searches your business appeared in, and the demand those searches produced for you
Question answered
Which channel was present when the buyer converted?
Where your demand comes from, how much of your demand leaks to competitors and where it can grow
Buyers who never arrive
Not counted
Counted as leaked visibility when a competitor receives the demand
Data source
Analytics tags, ad platform pixels and CRM tracking links
One Google Search Console export, or public search data if you have none
Paid media
Paid traffic can take credit for buyers who would have arrived anyway
The export covers organic search results, so paid activity does not enter the figures
Overlap between channels
Several channels can claim the same buyer, so totals can exceed 100 per cent
Each search appearance is counted once
Direct and dark traffic
Often placed in a Direct bucket with an unknown cause
Not needed, because the scan reads searches and ignores the path a buyer took to your site
Cause named
Credit by channel, with no cause for the buyers who left
Content that does not answer what buyers searched for
What it does not cover
Buyers who never arrive on your site
What happens after a buyer arrives, such as conversion rate and revenue

Adjacent methodology

Incrementality testing answers a question about one campaign

Incrementality testing runs a controlled experiment, such as a geo holdout, a matched-market test or a platform conversion lift study. It compares exposed buyers with a control group, so it measures cause directly.

The scope is one campaign in one period. The test needs a control group, a held-out market and enough volume to reach statistical significance. A business with limited volume may not meet those conditions across every channel at once.

Brand Demand Scan runs no experiment. It reads your Search Console export and measures where your demand comes from and how much of your demand leaks, with no control group and no waiting period.

The two answer different questions. A test judges one campaign after it has run. The scan shows where the allocation opportunity sits before a campaign is designed.

What the scan does not cover

The scan stops where the
buyer arrives on your site

Brand Demand Scan measures demand before the buyer reaches your site: where your demand comes from, how much of your demand leaks and where it can grow. It does not measure what happens after a buyer arrives. Conversion rate, revenue per visit and pipeline speed are outside the scan.

Those are covered in the BDS + Advisory engagement and the RoI² Framework, where the scan findings are combined with your own CRM and revenue data.

Next step

One scan quantifies your gap

Fixed price · No retainer · Nothing to install

Request a scan →

Related notes