Step two, after you've pulled the zero-order terms out of your search term repor
By Elizabeth Greene · September 22, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Step two, after you've pulled the zero-order terms out of your search term report, is to look at what's left.
The stuff that actually converted.
Sort it by spend and read the terms.
You're looking for one thing: how many of these are your brand name. Your brand name plus a product, your brand name spelled wrong, your brand plus "official store," all of it counts.
Because if most of the converting spend in a campaign you've labeled non-branded is your own name, that campaign is doing defense.
Defense is a real job, honestly.
It just isn't growth, and counting it as growth is how you end up with a campaign that looks like it's working while the revenue sits where it was.
And it isn't only keywords.
Look at the product targets too.
I've gotten into plenty of accounts where the "non-branded" campaign is running ASIN targeting on the brand's own catalog.
You're buying a click on a shopper who was already looking at your other listing.
So when I'm bucketing this out, I go through the actual converting keywords and the actual products being targeted, and the campaign name doesn't factor into it at all.
Then I add up what's branded versus what isn't.
Usually the split is nothing like what the campaign structure implies.
Pull the last 30 days of converting terms in your best-performing campaign and count how many have your brand in them.
What's the number?