Share of search tells you where you stand. It does not tell you what you're leaving behind.

Share of search is a known proxy: your brand's share of category search volume tracks, with a lag, your share of market. It is useful. It is also incomplete in one specific way, and that way is where the unclaimed revenue in a category sits.

Share of search tells you how much of the conversation you own. It does not tell you what happens to the conversation you do not own. A business can hold a strong, growing share of search and still lose much of the category demand that reaches it, because share of search measures presence and cannot show where the demand goes.

This is the distinction Brand Demand Scan is built to make. Untapped Potential measures the share of a business growth potential that is in category searches, where buyers do not know the business yet. In the five anonymised cases examined, that share ranges from 40.9 to 91.3 per cent. Demand Leakage measures the share of demand that leaks to competitors. In the same five cases it ranges from 82.0 to 99.7 per cent. A business can be winning share of search and still not know either of these numbers, because neither is visible in the metric.

Share of search is a market-level signal. Brand Demand Scan is the same category of measurement applied at the level of a single business's own search data, extended to show where you stand and how much of your visibility goes to competitors.

If you already track share of search, the next question is what happens to the share of category search that already reaches you.