How to Use Google Search Console’s (GSC) Branded Queries Filter

Search performance analysis often hits a wall when brand-heavy traffic masks the true results of organic growth efforts.

Recent industry data from seoClarity reveals that for established enterprises, branded searches can account for more than 65% of total organic traffic. This creates a halo effect that obscures the success of specific SEO campaigns.

On March 11, Google addressed this long-standing limitation by expanding the Branded Queries filter to all eligible domain properties. This feature, which began a gradual rollout in late 2025, provides a native way to segment search data without manual configuration.

It enables a clear distinction between users who already know an organisation and those who discover it through topical searches.

This guide details the mechanics of this tool and its role in refined data strategy.

What is the GSC’s New Branded Queries Filter?

The Branded Queries filter is a native classification layer within the Google Search Console (GSC) Performance report. It automatically identifies and segments search terms that relate to your brand name, common misspellings, and brand-specific product lines.

Before this update, analysts relied on complex regular expressions (regex) or exported data to external spreadsheets to strip away brand-name traffic. This manual process was tedious and frequently missed variations of brand names.

The new filter adds a persistent dimension to the Performance report, allowing you to toggle between branded and non-branded views for every core metric, including impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), and average position.

By isolating these two streams, you gain a more accurate view of your market reach. Branded traffic represents your current mental availability and brand loyalty.

Non-branded traffic represents your discovery potential. It pertains to the users who search for a problem or a service and find your brand for the first time.

How to Access the Branded Queries Filter in Your GSC Dashboard

Accessing the GSC branded queries filter requires a specific property setup and a minimum data threshold:

1. Requirements for Domain Properties

The Branded Queries filter only appears for Domain Properties (e.g., tellnolies.com.au). If you use a URL-prefix property (e.g., https://www.tellnolies.com.au), the feature remains unavailable.

Domain properties provide the comprehensive data set the AI needs to classify queries across all subdomains and protocol variations.

2. Locating the Filter

Open the “Search results” report under the Performance tab in your Search Console. If your site has sufficient query volume, a new “Branded vs Non-branded” dimension will appear in the filter bar at the top or within the primary data table.

3. Reviewing Search Console Insights

Google also integrates this data into the Search Console Insights interface. This provides a high-level summary of your brand-driven growth versus your content-driven discovery.

This section highlights which specific non-branded pages are currently capturing the most interest from new audiences.

Understanding the AI Behind the Classification

Google uses an AI-assisted classification system to drive this filter. It doesn’t require you to input a list of keywords or define your brand name manually.

The system analyses global search patterns and the context of your domain to determine which queries belong in the branded bucket.

• Core Brand Identification. The AI identifies your primary brand name.
• Misspelling Logic. It automatically groups variations and common typos that users enter when looking for your business.
• Brand-Adjacent Products. It identifies product names that users associate exclusively with your brand, ensuring they don’t leak into the discovery (non-branded) data.
• Dynamic Learning. As your brand launches new products or enters new markets, the system updates its classification to reflect the evolving search landscape.

This automated approach ensures data consistency. It prevents the common errors found in manual regex filters, such as accidentally excluding a non-branded term that shares a similar string of characters with your brand name.

How to Analyse Discovery Traffic for Strategic Growth

The most significant advantage of this filter is the ability to view your Discovery performance in isolation. This represents the fruit of your SEO and content marketing labour.

Identify Content Acquisition Gaps

When you filter for non-branded queries, you see which pages attract people who haven’t heard of you yet. If your non-branded impressions are stagnant while your branded clicks are high, your content strategy is likely too bottom-funnel.

You are capturing existing intent but failing to create new demand. Use this data to identify top-of-funnel topics that could expand your audience reach.

Optimise the First Impression

Users who arrive via non-branded searches have a different relationship with your site than brand-loyalists. They require more education and social proof.

By identifying the top landing pages for non-branded traffic, you can audit these specific pages for trust signals. Ensure these pages clearly explain who you are and why you have the authority to solve their problem.

Measure SEO Campaign ROI

SEO campaigns almost always target non-branded, topical keywords. Without this filter, a successful PR stunt that spikes your brand name can make a failing SEO campaign look successful on paper.

Segmenting your traffic allows you to report on the actual growth of your organic acquisition efforts, providing a clean ROI metric to stakeholders.

Measure Brand Awareness with the GSC Branded Queries Filter

While non-branded traffic drives growth, branded traffic measures the health of your overall marketing ecosystem. The Branded Queries filter provides several insights into brand strength:

• Brand Demand Trends. Monitor the branded impressions metric over time. A rise in this number indicates that your social media, email marketing, or offline advertising efforts are working. 

People are searching for you by name because they saw your message elsewhere.

• Branded CTR Health. Branded queries should maintain a high CTR. If you see a decline, it suggests that competitors are bidding on your brand terms in Google Ads, or your meta descriptions no longer provide the reassurance users expect when searching for your name.
• Geographic Brand Penetration. Use the country filter in conjunction with the branded filter. This reveals where your brand has the highest recognition.

For an Australian business, you might find strong brand demand in Melbourne but exclusively discovery-based traffic in Sydney. This informs where you should spend your next brand-building budget.

Best Practices for Advanced Data Strategy

Moving beyond the GSC interface allows you to unlock deeper insights from this new classification.

Connect to BigQuery

Use the native BigQuery export in GSC to bring your branded/non-branded query data into your warehouse.

By joining this with your CRM data, you can calculate the lifetime value (LTV) of a user who discovered you through a non-branded search versus one who came through a branded search. 

Frequently, non-branded users represent a higher long-term value because they are new to your ecosystem.

Track Search Share of Voice

Combine your branded impressions with total category impressions to estimate your search share of voice (SoV). This provides a tangible KPI for brand-building efforts that usually feel unmeasurable.

Limitations and Considerations When Using GSC’s Branded Queries Filter

The filter requires a sufficient query volume to activate. Smaller sites or new domains may not see the option immediately.

Furthermore, because it’s an AI system, minor misclassifications can occur. Periodically audit the non-branded queries list to ensure no niche brand variations are inflating your discovery metrics.

The filter also highlights the importance of the domain property. If you currently use URL-prefix properties, you should transition to a domain property to access this feature. This change also provides a more complete view of your site’s health across all protocols.

Professional Implementation with Tell No Lies

Accurate data segmentation is the foundation of every high-performing marketing strategy. The Branded Queries filter removes the guesswork from organic search analysis, but the real value comes from what you do with that data.

Integrating these insights into a broader business intelligence framework requires technical precision and strategic oversight.

At Tell No Lies, we specialise in the technical architecture and advanced analytics that turn search data into business growth. We help agencies and businesses move away from surface-level metrics and toward deep, actionable intelligence. We ensure your data tells the truth about your brand’s performance.

Contact us today for a comprehensive Search Console and data strategy audit. Let us help you reveal the real drivers of your growth.