Share of Search Tracker: your brand vs competitors

Share of search is your brand's share of all searches for the brands in your category. If people search for Toyota 30 times for every 100 searches across all car brands, Toyota's share of search is 30%.

Marketing effectiveness expert Les Binet presented it at the IPA's EffWorks Global in 2020. He found that share of search tracks market share in cars, energy and mobile phones, and that it can move before market share does. In mobile phones it led by about six months. Since then, brand teams and agencies have used it as a fast, cheap brand-health metric.

The problem is that Google Trends compares only 5 terms at a time, and most categories have more than 5 brands. This Actor puts up to 100 brands on one scale and gives you share of search per month, quarter or year.

Example: smartphone brands in Bangladesh (real run, last 5 years, by quarter)

Rank	Brand	Share, Q3 2026	Change vs Q2	5-year average
1	Samsung	18.57%	−0.31	22.41%
2	Vivo	15.43%	+0.73	15.66%
3	Apple	10.07%	+1.71	4.87%
4	Realme	10.02%	+0.06	15.29%
5	Oppo	9.98%	−0.63	12.30%
6	Infinix	8.98%	−0.50	6.64%
7	Honor	7.51%	+0.42	2.98%
8	Tecno	6.57%	−0.37	4.96%
9	Xiaomi	5.96%	+0.25	4.57%
10	Walton	3.85%	−1.52	4.97%
11	Symphony	1.54%	−0.01	2.72%
12	Nokia	1.52%	+0.17	2.64%

12 brands, one run, about 40 seconds. Since late 2021, Apple has nearly tripled its share (3.6% → 10.1%), Honor has grown from almost nothing (0.6% → 7.5%), and Realme has fallen from its 2023 peak (19.5% → 10.0%).

What you get

For every brand:

• share of search in the latest finished period (%), the previous period, and the change in points;
• average share over the whole time range;
• its rank in the latest period;
• the full timeline of shares per period;
• how it was measured (matchedAs) and a precision label (high, medium, low) for its underlying data.

You also get a wide table (CSV) with periods in rows and brands in columns, ready for a chart in Excel or Google Sheets. It's saved in the key-value store record SHARES.

The current period is still collecting data, so it's marked partial in the table and never used as "latest".

Input

Field	Example	Notes
Your brand and its competitors	Samsung, Vivo, Jaguar (car make)	2 to 100 brands. Name=/m/ID pins a brand to an exact Google topic.
Market	US, GB, BD	Share of search is most meaningful per country. Empty means worldwide.
Time range	today 5-y	Also today 12-m, all (since 2004), or 2022-01-01 2026-10-31.
Report share per	Month, Quarter, Year	Longer periods are steadier.
Category ID	0 (default)	Optional. See "Should I use a category?" below.
Use Google topics instead of brand names	off (default)	See "Brand names or topics?" below.

{
  "brands": ["Samsung", "Xiaomi", "Realme", "Vivo", "Oppo", "Apple", "Infinix", "Tecno", "Walton", "Symphony", "Nokia", "Honor"],
  "geo": "BD",
  "timeframe": "today 5-y",
  "period": "quarter"
}

Getting it right

Measure every brand the same way

Shares are only fair when every brand is measured the same way. By default, the Actor measures each brand's plain name, as Binet's original method does. If you switch on Google topics, the Actor uses a topic only when its name matches, its type is a business, and it's actually searched in your market. Otherwise it keeps the plain name, and warns you when brands end up measured in different ways. In our tests, Google's company topics for some brands captured only a fraction of their real searches, so mixing methods biased the result.

Should I use a category?

A category keeps only the searches Google files under it. Use it when a brand name is also a common word, like Apple, Jaguar or Shell. Be aware that it can change shares a lot, because Google files some brands' searches better than others'. Same brands, same market, same period:

Brand	All searches	Category 390, Mobile Phones
Samsung	18.57%	57.92%
Realme	10.02%	2.75%
Oppo	9.98%	1.94%
Nokia	1.52%	6.49%

Neither is "wrong", but they answer different questions. Pick one and keep it the same over time. Useful IDs: 390 Mobile Phones, 47 Autos & Vehicles, 5 Computers & Electronics, 37 Banking, 38 Insurance, 918 Fast Food, 68 Apparel.

Sub-brands

People often search a sub-brand instead of the company: "Redmi" rather than "Xiaomi", "Galaxy", "iPhone". Add sub-brands as separate entries in the same run. Shares from one run add up, so the Xiaomi family is Xiaomi + Redmi + Poco.

FAQ

Is the data genuine? Yes. Google sends automated tools decoy data in some panels (related queries), but not in the interest-over-time data this Actor uses. We checked it against the Google Trends website, value by value: 53 of 53 weeks identical (7 Nov 2026), and we repeat the check every month.

How is share of search calculated? For each period, a brand's total search interest is divided by the total for all the brands you entered, times 100. The brands' shares in a period add up to 100%.

Which brands should I include? All the main brands that buyers in your category consider. Leaving out a big competitor inflates everyone else's share. Keep the list the same between runs so trends stay comparable.

Does share of search predict market share? Binet's research found it tracks market share and often moves first. He also warned that it isn't a perfect predictor (price and distribution matter too), and that not all searches are positive (a scandal raises searches). Use it as one signal among others.

How does the one-scale part work? Brands are first sized against an anchor, then grouped with brands of similar size into batches of up to 5. Neighbouring batches share one brand that links their scales, and everything is rescaled together. Small brands don't get rounded to 0 next to market leaders. In tests on simulated Google data with a known true answer, no brand was lost and the worst error stayed under 1% when brand sizes spanned 1,000x.

Can I compare keywords that aren't brands? Yes, but for general keyword comparison our Google Trends Compare Actor gives interest values instead of shares.

Do I pay for failed runs? You're charged per brand in the results. If a run fails, no results are written and no brand charges apply.

Limits

• Google Trends gives relative interest, not absolute search counts. Shares are exact ratios of that interest.
• Very small brands next to market leaders may get a medium or low precision label: their shares are rough.