Guide · Search intelligence
What is share of search on quick commerce, and how is it measured?
The first ten unpaid results, counted by brand over many searches: what the number means, and five ways it gets misread.
When a shopper types “curd” or “protein bar”, the app answers with a ranked list, and only so many products fit on the first screen. Share of search is a way of counting who holds that screen. It is a simple number, and it is easy to get wrong.
The definition
Take one keyword on one app. Type it many times, in many cities. Each time, look at the first ten unpaid results, in the order the app returned them. Paid results are counted apart.
Now count: of all those slots, the share your products held is your share of search for that keyword on that app.
So if a keyword was read in 100 searches, there are 1,000 first-ten slots. A brand whose products held 150 of them has a 15% share of search on that keyword, on that app.
What it tells you
- How much of the first screen is yours, against every other brand that appears beside you, keyword by keyword.
- Where you are missing. The keywords of your category where your products held none of the first ten slots in any search.
- Where a rival is strong. The same count for a rival shows the keywords it holds and you do not.
Five ways it gets misread
1. Adding it across apps
A 20% share on one app and 10% on another is not 15% overall. The apps have different shoppers and different pages. Keep each app’s number separate.
2. Trusting one search
The order of results moves from city to city and from one search to the next. One look is one draw. A share is only worth quoting when it is counted over many searches.
3. Mixing paid and unpaid
A product in a paid slot was not ranked there. If paid results are counted in, the number measures budgets as much as relevance. Count the unpaid results, and show the paid slots beside them.
4. Reading a city as every pincode
A results page is set to one store’s delivery area, and the page in another part of the city can differ.
5. Reading it as sales
A slot on the first screen is a chance to be bought, not a sale. Nobody outside the app sees what was sold.
Rank and share, together
Share of search answers “how much of the screen”. Rank answers “how high”. They are worth reading together: a brand can hold three of the first ten slots and none of the first three. For a single keyword, the useful pair is your usual best place among the unpaid results, and the share of searches where you were in the first three.