branded traffic
Also called: brand traffic, branded search traffic
Branded traffic is the visits a site earns from search queries containing its brand name, product names, or close variations and misspellings. In Google Search Console it is the "Branded" half of the branded-queries filter, split from non-branded (discovery) traffic.
Branded traffic sits at the bottom of the funnel: the person already knows you and typed your name to find you (“seobro”, “seobro pricing”). Non-branded traffic (“seo agency madrid”, “how to fix crawl errors”) is discovery demand from people who do not yet know which company to pick. Both land in your organic reports, but they mean different things. A jump in branded search usually reflects PR, ads, or word of mouth, not your SEO content work.
How Google splits it
Since November 2025, Google Search Console separates the two with a built-in Branded filter in the Performance report. Google defines a branded query as one that “includes your brand name (for example, Google), variations or misspellings of the brand name (for example, Gogle), and brand-related products or services (for example, Gmail).” It is not a regex you write. Google uses an internal AI-assisted system that recognizes your brand across languages and typos, and it only appears for domain-level properties with enough query volume.
Why segment? If you count branded and non-branded together, brand demand can mask flat or falling discovery traffic. You look like you are growing while your reach into new audiences stalls. Search Engine Land notes branded queries “typically lead to higher-ranking pages from your site and result in higher click-through rates, whereas non-branded queries offer organic growth.” Tracking the ratio over time tells you whether SEO is expanding the top of the funnel or just harvesting demand other channels created.
How it affects your traffic
An honest read of your organic performance starts by splitting branded from non-branded traffic. If most of your clicks are branded, your rankings for new, non-brand topics are likely weaker than the headline traffic number suggests, and your pipeline depends on demand other channels create. An SEO Audit segments the two in Search Console so you can see whether SEO is winning new audiences or just capturing people already searching for you, then it points work at the non-branded gaps that actually grow the funnel.
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