branded_search Branded search
How many people search for the brand by name each month, worldwide. The clearest sign of demand a brand has created.
scale weight 0.35
method v1.1
Methodology
How we choose which brands to include, what we measure, and how the measurements become ranks.
Who's included
Brands enter as candidates through public site rankings, ecommerce platform detection and a set of secondary lists. Every candidate is classified and then checked against the rules below. When the classification isn't clear, a person reviews it.
included
own_brand | Sells its own-brand physical products, made or sourced |
own_checkout | Sells direct through a checkout on its own site |
size_floor | 1,000+ branded searches a month, plus a top-1M site or 20k+ social followers |
excluded
retailer | Retailers, marketplaces and multi-brand stores |
graduated | Top-10k sites or $300M+ estimated revenue: moved to the graduated list |
d2c_nativeNearly all sales happen on the brand's own site.
d2c_ledThe brand's own site comes first, with some sales through retail or Amazon.
wholesale_ledMostly sold through retailers and stockists, with its own online store alongside.
We assign tiers from public signals: a store locator, a stockists page, retail partner logos and Amazon listings.
What we measure
site_traffic Site traffic
Estimated visits to the brand's own store, blended with public popularity rankings (Chrome UX Report and Tranco).
scale weight 0.35
social_followers Social audience
Followers across Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and YouTube, captured as monthly snapshots.
scale weight 0.30
Ad activity feeds Momentum only.
How scores work
- Normalise. Each metric is scored 0 to 100 on a log scale between fixed anchors (for example, branded search: 1,000 a month scores 0, one million scores 100). Every 10x in size adds the same points, and a brand's score doesn't change just because other brands join the index.
- Scale is a weighted blend of search, traffic and social audience.
- Momentum blends 12-month growth (60%) and 3-month growth (40%), where the 3-month figure compares the last three months with the same months a year earlier, so seasonal brands are treated fairly. Each growth figure combines search, traffic, social and ads. Momentum is absolute: 50 means flat, higher means growing, lower means shrinking.
- Smoothing. Inputs use 3-month averages. A brand must appear two months in a row to enter the Top 50 risers.
- Emerging brands. Brands under 5,000 monthly branded searches get a Scale score but no Momentum score.
We publish ranks and scores only, never raw vendor figures or revenue estimates. Each change to the method gets a new version number and a changelog entry.
version: 1.1 normalise: transform: log10 # every 10x adds the same number of points anchors: # [value scoring 0, value scoring 100], clamped search: [1000, 1000000] # monthly branded searches visits: [1000, 10000000] # monthly site visits rank: [1000000, 1000] # traffic rank (Tranco, CrUX) social: [1000, 10000000] # followers, all platforms scale: # how big a brand is today search: 0.35 traffic: 0.35 # visits 0.5 + Tranco rank 0.3 + CrUX rank 0.2 social: 0.30 momentum: # how fast it is growing; 50 = flat growth_12m: 0.60 growth_3m: 0.40 # year-on-year: last 3 months vs same 3 a year ago growth_blend: search: 0.40 traffic: 0.35 social: 0.20 # counts after 3 monthly snapshots ads: 0.05 doubling_scores: 88 # growth of 2x scores 88, halving scores 12 min_baseline_searches: 5000 # below this: "emerging" smoothing: window_months: 3 risers_consecutive_months: 2