Money paid to Google for clicks the merchant would get free organically. The top wasted-spend audit finding for brands ranked #1 to #3 for their own name.
At a glance
Branded Search Cannibalisation cross-references your Search Console organic data against your Google Ads spend on the same branded queries. When you already rank in the top three organically for your own brand and product names, the paid clicks you buy on those identical queries are largely clicks you would have won for free. The card surfaces the monthly spend at risk: branded queries where your organic position is 3 or better AND you are paying Google for the same term. This is consistently the single largest wasted-spend finding in a paid-media audit for established brands, because the incremental value of a paid click sitting above an organic result you already own is close to zero.
| What it measures | For each branded query, your organic average position (from Search Console) joined to your paid spend and clicks on that query (from Google Ads). It flags queries where organic position is 3 or better and paid spend is non-trivial, then totals the at-risk monthly spend. |
| Data sources | Google Search Console Search Analytics API (query dimension, position and clicks metrics) joined to the Google Ads connector’s branded-campaign spend and search-term report. Two connectors, one join key: the query string. |
| Time window | 30D vsP. Trailing 30 days of spend and organic position, compared against the prior 30 days to show whether the cannibalised spend is rising or falling. |
| Alert trigger | Fires when paid spend on branded queries with organic position 3 or better exceeds £500 per month (>£500/mo paid spend on branded queries with organic position <=3). |
| Why it matters | A paid click above an organic result you already rank #1 to #3 for is rarely incremental: the user would very likely have clicked your free organic listing immediately below. That spend is, in most cases, defending a position you already hold for free. |
| The legitimate exceptions | Branded paid is not always waste. It can be defensible when competitors bid on your brand, when you need to control the message (sale, recall, new launch) or own more SERP real estate. The card surfaces the spend so you can make that call deliberately, not pay it by default. |
| Currency | GBP by default for the threshold; the underlying spend is read in the Google Ads account currency. |
| Roles | owner, marketing |
Calculation
The card builds a per-query join across the two connectors over the 30-day window:- Identify branded queries. Queries containing the brand token(s) and known product or sub-brand names. Branded classification mirrors the logic behind Branded vs Non-Branded.
- Pull organic position per branded query from Search Console: the average
positionandclicksfor that query over the window. - Pull paid spend and clicks per branded query from the Google Ads search-term and keyword reports for the same window.
- Flag the overlap. A query is “cannibalised” when organic average position is 3 or better AND paid spend on it is non-trivial.
- Total the at-risk spend across all flagged queries:
cannibalised_spend for the trailing 30 days exceeds £500. The vsP comparison shows whether you are spending more or less on cannibalised branded terms than the prior month. This is an estimate of spend at risk, not a guaranteed saving: the true incremental value depends on how many of those paid clicks would genuinely have converted to organic clicks, which the next section discusses.
Worked example
A UK skincare brand, “Aurelia Botanica”, Search Console and Google Ads both connected. The card fires on 22 Jun 26 with £1,840 of cannibalised branded spend in the trailing 30 days.| Branded query | Organic avg position | Organic clicks (30D) | Paid spend (30D) | Paid clicks (30D) | Flagged |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aurelia botanica | 1.1 | 14,200 | £980 | 3,100 | Yes |
| aurelia botanica serum | 1.4 | 4,300 | £420 | 1,150 | Yes |
| aurelia botanica discount code | 2.2 | 1,900 | £290 | 760 | Yes |
| aurelia botanica vs [competitor] | 6.8 | 210 | £150 | 240 | No (position > 3) |
| aurelia botanica stockists | 3.0 | 540 | £0 | 0 | No (no paid spend) |
- The top three rows are the finding. For “aurelia botanica” the brand ranks 1.1 organically (effectively the first result) yet pays £980 a month for the same term. The paid ad sits above an organic listing the user would reach within one line of scrolling. The £980 is defending a position the brand already owns.
- The fourth row is correctly NOT flagged. “aurelia botanica vs [competitor]” ranks 6.8 organically, below the fold, so the paid click there IS likely incremental: without the ad the brand would capture little of that query. The card deliberately excludes it. This is the discipline that stops the card from over-claiming savings.
- The recommended action is a test, not a switch-off. The orthodox move is a controlled brand-bidding pause (or a tightly capped budget) on the top two flagged exact-match terms for two to four weeks, while watching total branded clicks (paid + organic) in Total Clicks and branded revenue. If total branded clicks hold steady when paid is paused, the paid spend was cannibalising free organic and can be cut. If total branded clicks fall (competitors filled the gap, or some users only click ads), reinstate paid for those terms.
- The likely outcome here. With organic at position 1.1 and no competitor bidding on the core brand term, pausing paid on the top two rows is expected to recover most of the lost clicks organically, saving roughly £1,400 a month at little traffic cost. The “discount code” term is more nuanced: those searchers have high intent and competitors often bid on “[brand] discount code”, so that £290 may be worth defending.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Branded Search Cannibalisation |
|---|---|
| Branded vs Non-Branded | The split this card depends on. Confirms how much of your organic demand is branded in the first place. |
| Total Clicks | The control metric for a brand-bidding pause test. Total branded clicks should hold when paid is paused if the spend was cannibalising. |
| Average Position | The eligibility gate. Only queries at organic position 3 or better are flagged. |
| Top Queries by Clicks | Confirms your branded terms are indeed your top organic click earners. |
| Queries with Highest CTR | Branded terms usually dominate here, evidence users find and click you without paid help. |
| Organic-to-Revenue Divergence | The revenue translation. Confirms whether organic is pulling its weight before you cut paid support. |
Reconciling against the source
This card is a join of two systems, so reconcile each side independently before trusting the combined figure. The organic side, in Search Console:Performance > Search results, filter Query > Queries containing your brand name, and read Average position and Clicks per branded query for the same 30-day window. This is the organic half of the join.The paid side, in Google Ads:
Campaigns, your branded campaign(s), or the Search terms report filtered to branded terms, reading Cost and Clicks per term for the same window. This is the paid half.Why our number may legitimately differ:
| Reason | Direction of divergence |
|---|---|
| Search Console data lag. Organic position and clicks lag 2 to 3 days; Google Ads cost is near real time. The two halves are not pulled at exactly the same freshness. | Organic side reads slightly stale at the window edge |
| Anonymised branded queries. Rare branded long-tail queries are dropped from the organic side by Search Console’s privacy filter, so a few cannibalised terms may be invisible to the join. | Card may under-count slightly |
| Branded classification. Our brand-token matching may include or exclude a borderline term (a partial brand match, a sub-brand) differently from how you would. | Variable; review the flagged list |
| Position is an average. Search Console position is averaged across impressions, so a query at “position 2.8” may have ranked 1 most of the time and 6 occasionally. The 3-or-better gate uses the average. | Edge queries near the threshold may flip |
| Match-type spill. Broad-match paid keywords can attract spend on branded search terms not in your keyword list; the search-term report captures these but a keyword-only view would miss them. | Use the search-term report for the fullest paid figure |
| Card | Expected relationship | What a divergence means |
|---|---|---|
google_ads branded campaign spend | The paid half of this card should tie back to the spend reported on your branded campaign. | If they disagree, check that the Ads connector and this card use the same branded-campaign definition and window. |
| Total Clicks | When you pause branded paid, organic clicks should rise to absorb most of the lost paid clicks if the spend was cannibalising. | If total branded clicks fall after a paid pause, the spend was partly incremental; reinstate it. |
| Branded vs Non-Branded | A high branded organic share strengthens the cannibalisation case. | A low branded organic share means the brand-bidding may be building, not defending, recognition. |