The split between brand and non-brand search tells you where a company’s search demand actually comes from.
That difference changes what search is actually doing for the business.
So we pulled the data apart.
Using Ahrefs, we analyzed the organic and paid keyword portfolios of HubSpot, Stripe, Figma, Databricks, Twilio, Box, and Zoom. Every keyword was segmented into branded and non-branded queries, then examined through traffic share, paid activity, and CPC.
Once you look at search through that lens, the patterns become much clearer. Some companies run heavily on brand demand. Others consistently capture category interest long before the buyer searches for a product by name.
For this report, we looked at the search portfolios of 7 leading SaaS brands. The idea was to understand how much of their search demand comes from brand queries and how much comes from broader category searches.
To do that, we worked with keyword-level data from Ahrefs Site Explorer and analyzed both organic and paid keyword sets.
Here’s what the process looked like:
Once that split was in place, the patterns started to show up quickly. You can see which companies rely heavily on existing brand demand and which ones consistently capture interest earlier, while buyers are still exploring the category.
A few patterns become obvious once the brand and non-brand split is mapped across these companies.
About 95.3% of Zoom’s organic traffic comes from branded searches, making it the most brand-dependent company in the dataset. For many users, Google is simply the quickest way to reach Zoom rather than a place to discover it.
Roughly 88.4% of Box’s organic traffic is branded. Part of the reason is structural. “Box” is also a common English word, which makes it harder for the company to build strong visibility around broader category terms.
Only 13.9% of its paid traffic comes from branded keywords, while the vast majority targets category queries like AI and data infrastructure. Those non-brand terms are also expensive, with an average CPC of $7.16, suggesting a deliberate push into high-value discovery searches.
Its traffic split sits close to 59% branded and 41% non-branded, meaning the company captures both direct brand demand and a significant amount of category interest from designers exploring tools.
Around 59.9% of its paid traffic comes from branded keywords, with an average CPC of $4.62, suggesting a clear effort to control the results page when users search for the brand.
While about 60% of its organic traffic is branded, the company also ranks for high-value non-brand terms like “pci dss” and “online payments,” capturing demand well before buyers search for the brand directly.
Once we separated branded and non-branded traffic, the spread between these companies became clear.
To make that easier to see, we ranked each company by the share of organic traffic coming from branded searches.
Two patterns stand out right away.
That balance tends to be the healthier place to sit. It combines brand demand with visibility across the broader category.
Neither model is right or wrong. But the mix reveals a lot about how each company grows.
Paid search tells a slightly different story.
Some companies allocate a large portion of their spend protecting their own brand name in search. Others use paid search to reach buyers who are still exploring the category.
The table below shows how that balance looks across the seven companies we analyzed.
We grouped their approaches into a few recognizable patterns:
The takeaway is pretty simple. Strong SaaS search programs rarely rely on just one source of demand. The companies that perform best over time usually build both brand recognition that drives navigational search, and category visibility that introduces new buyers to the product.
Once we mapped the branded and non-branded splits, the patterns became much clearer. Each company’s search profile shows how much demand already exists for the brand and how much it competes for category discovery.
Looking at the companies one by one makes those differences easier to see.
HubSpot sits firmly in what we would call a brand-defender position.
The branded traffic is dominated by navigational queries tied directly to the product. The largest contributors include:
These searches reflect existing demand. Users already know the product and are using Google as the quickest way to reach it.
Where HubSpot becomes interesting is in its non-brand footprint. The company ranks for more than 50,000 non-branded keywords, many of which target core marketing and CRM concepts. Some of the highest traffic terms include:
These queries bring in users who are still exploring marketing tools or learning about CRM workflows. In other words, they represent earlier-stage demand.
HubSpot’s paid search program leans strongly toward brand protection.
That pattern suggests a clear priority: maintaining control of the search results whenever someone looks up the HubSpot name.
So, HubSpot’s search profile reflects the position the company occupies in the market.
The brand is already well established, so a large portion of search demand is navigational. At the same time, the company still maintains meaningful visibility across category terms like CRM and marketing automation.
Stripe’s search profile looks very different from companies that rely heavily on brand demand.
While branded queries still account for a large portion of traffic, Stripe also captures a significant amount of search activity from category-level terms tied to payments infrastructure.
The branded side of the traffic is dominated by familiar navigational queries:
What makes Stripe’s search presence interesting is the type of non-brand terms it ranks for.
These are not product queries. They are problem and infrastructure queries. The kind developers, founders, and finance teams search while figuring out how payments should work inside their product.
Stripe’s paid search program reinforces that positioning.
Here, the search presence mirrors the role it plays in the ecosystem. The product sits at the center of payments infrastructure, and the search footprint reflects that.
Figma is one of the few companies we found where brand demand and category demand grow almost side by side.
The branded demand alone is massive. Searches tied directly to the product dominate the traffic profile:
Those queries reflect the scale of adoption the product has reached.
At the same time, Figma also captures a substantial share of category-level design traffic. The company ranks for nearly 70,000 non-branded keywords, which brings in more than 5 million organic visits each month.
Paid search shows a similar emphasis on category discovery.
Figma’s search presence shows what a mature SaaS search engine can look like.
The brand itself generates enormous demand, but the company also maintains strong visibility across the broader design category. That combination creates two consistent streams of traffic: users who already know the product and users who are still exploring design tools.
Databricks shows one of the more deliberate search strategies.
On the organic side, brand demand still drives the majority of traffic.
The branded traffic is largely driven by navigational and product-related searches:
These searches typically come from users who already know the platform and are trying to access documentation, careers, certifications, or product resources.
The non-brand traffic points to something different. Databricks ranks across a range of foundational topics in modern data infrastructure and machine learning.
These queries are not tied to a specific vendor. They represent the kinds of questions data teams ask when they are designing or evaluating their data architecture.
The paid search program reinforces this pattern.
So, they use paid search primarily to expand category visibility.
That approach allows Databricks to enter the conversation earlier, when the architecture decisions are still being shaped.
Twilio’s search profile leans much more heavily toward non-brand expansion, especially on the paid side.
In organic search, the split is relatively balanced.
The branded traffic is largely driven by product and platform-related queries:
The non-brand keywords tell a broader story about the types of topics Twilio appears for in search:
These terms capture a mix of developer-related searches and broader marketing or infrastructure topics.
The company’s paid search activity leans much more strongly toward non-brand discovery.
Twilio’s paid search program is clearly focused on reaching users beyond existing brand demand.
With nearly 80% of paid traffic coming from non-brand queries, the company is investing heavily in category-level searches where developers and businesses are still evaluating communication infrastructure options.
Box sits much closer to the brand-heavy end of the spectrum.
These queries suggest that most users arriving through search already know the platform and are using Google as a shortcut to reach it.
Box does rank for non-brand keywords, but the traffic contribution from those terms is much smaller.
The company’s paid search activity tells a slightly different story. While organic traffic is heavily brand-driven, the paid program focuses much more on category terms.
This reliance could also be partly structural. Because “box” is also a common English word, building strong visibility around broader category queries can be more difficult.
As a result, most of the company’s search traffic arrives from users who already know the brand.
Zoom sits at the extreme end of brand-driven search.
The branded demand is enormous and dominated by direct product navigation:
These searches represent users who already know exactly what they are looking for. In many cases, Google simply acts as the fastest way to reach the product.
The non-brand side of Zoom’s search traffic is very small in comparison. Most of the top queries are actually variations or translations of the Zoom brand name rather than category searches.
Zoom’s paid search activity shows a slightly more balanced approach.
Their search presence reflects the scale of its brand recognition.
When we look closely, several strategic signals emerge from the data.
Zoom and Box rely heavily on brand searches for organic traffic. If brand awareness slows or competitors capture mindshare, organic traffic can drop sharply. There is little non-brand visibility to cushion that impact.
Companies like Stripe, Figma, and Databricks capture significant traffic from category keywords. These searches happen before the buyer chooses a vendor, which makes them strategically valuable.
When companies allocate the majority of paid traffic to branded terms, they are primarily defending their SERP real estate. This protects conversion rates but does not expand the market.
Databricks shows what category creation looks like in practice. High-CPC non-brand keywords become the primary paid acquisition engine.
Figma’s balance creates a powerful growth flywheel. Brand awareness drives navigation traffic. Category authority captures evaluation traffic. That balance is rare. But it represents the long-term objective for most SaaS companies building an organic growth engine.
Before drawing conclusions, it helps to understand how we approached the analysis. We’ve mentioned parts of it earlier, but it’s worth restating briefly.
All the numbers here come from third-party estimates via Ahrefs (as of early 2026), based on organic and paid keyword data for the seven companies we analyzed. They’re directional. What they show well are relative patterns between companies operating at a similar scale.
When you look at the data, a few things matter the most:
You can look at it as a way to add a bit of context. It gives a clearer picture of how search demand is spread across several SaaS companies and the kinds of strategies they use.
Again, there isn’t a single right way to approach search. What works depends on the company, the category, and how demand forms in that market.
