Introduction
With so many bidding strategies, metrics, and acronyms to keep up with across search, it can feel like a minefield trying to choose the right one for your brand. While one of the lesser-known metrics to keep an eye on, your Search Impression Share (SIS) is a great indicator of how you stack up against the competition.
Let’s take a look at what SIS is, how to calculate your SIS, and how to optimize your ads toward a higher SIS.
Table of Contents
1. What is Search Impression Share?
2. What Search Impression Share Should I Aim For?
3. How Do I Find My Search Impression Share?
4. Is It Possible to Find Out Where I’ve Lost Out On Search Impression Share?
5. How Can I increase my Search Impression Share?
6. Is Impression Share Data Available for All Campaign Types?
7. Search Impression Share Metrics
Final Thoughts On Search Impression Share
What Is Search Impression Share And Why Is It Important?
1. What is Search Impression Share?
Search Impression Share is a measure of how often your ad appears on the SERP (search engine results page) compared to how often it could appear. For example, if there are 1,000 searches for a relevant keyword to your brand, and your ad appears 100 times, your search impression share would be 10%.
Search Impression Share is important because, as an advertiser, you’ll want your ads to appear on the SERP as often as possible. Put simply, the more eyes on your ads, the stronger your campaign performance is likely to be.
2. What Search Impression Share Should I Aim For?
The bad news is that there’s no single ideal target to aim for because there are so many variables and contributing factors that make up SIS. However, there is also a difference between SIS on generic terms and SIS on branded terms.
For example, a sneaker company - an industry with lots of spend and a vast amount of competition - is very likely to expect a SIS of <10%, whether locally or nationally, when advertising sneakers. But, for branded searches, advertisers should aim for a much higher SIS closer to 80-90%. This is because the customer already has brand awareness and is specifically looking for this brand’s website or products, which means they’re lower down the funnel and more likely to click and convert.
So, as an advertiser, it’s important to ensure that your SIS is strong for your branded terms, to increase the likelihood of a potential customer landing (and converting!) on your website, rather than that of the competition.
But, a service provider (daycare, hairdresser, cosmetologist) who is targeting their local area may expect a much higher SIS for generic keywords, depending on the volume of local competition. So, there is no one-size-fits-all to what SIS should be, particularly for generic and broader terms.
3. How Do I Find My Search Impression Share?
Your SIS is calculated at the campaign, ad group, and individual keyword levels. Usually, we view this at the campaign level first and drill down from there as required.
If Search Impression Share data isn’t appearing on your Campaign reports:
1. Click on the ‘Columns’ tab (on Google or Microsoft Ads)
2. Click ‘Modify Columns’
3. Click ‘Competitive Metrics’ on Google or ‘Competitive (Share of Voice)’ on Microsoft Ads
4. Select ‘Search Impr. Share’ (Google) or ‘Impr. Share’ (Microsoft).
This will add a new column to your reports to highlight the Search Impression Share of the campaign, ad group, or keyword.
4. Is It Possible to Find Out Where I’ve Lost Out On Search Impression Share?
Yes! There are two key metrics that we use to understand lost opportunities for SIS. These are ‘SIS Lost (Budget)’ and ‘SIS Lost (Rank)’. They’re quite self-explanatory:
- SIS Lost (Budget) is the percentage of missed opportunities to appear on the SERP due to budget
- SIS Lost (Rank) is the percentage of missed opportunities to appear on the SERP due to rank.
Again, this can be accessed at the campaign, ad group, or keyword level by following the instructions above to add new metrics to your reports and selecting ‘Search lost IS (rank)’ or ‘Search lost IS (budget)’ on Google, or ‘IS lost to budget’ and ‘IS lost to rank’ on Microsoft’. These two additional columns will show you how often your campaign, ad group, or keyword has missed out on an opportunity to appear on the SERP and why. You can also use date comparisons in your reporting to understand how these metrics have changed over time.
Google Ads Search Impression Share reporting
Microsoft Ads Search Impression Share reporting
If you’re missing out on Search Impression Share due to budget, this may mean that your daily or monthly budgets aren’t high enough to outbid the competition. It may also mean that your CPC (cost per click) isn’t set high enough if you have bid limits in place or are using a bidding strategy such as Manual CPC or Enhanced CPC. SIS lost due to budget may also mean that your daily budget isn’t stretching very far - and is perhaps depleted earlier in the day, leading to significant losses in SIS throughout the afternoon and evening.
If you’re missing out on Search Impression Share due to rank, this is likely because your ad rank is too low to frequently outrank the competition. Factors included in calculating your ad rank are expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.
5. How can I increase my Search Impression Share?
If Search Impression Share is an important metric to your brand, consider using ‘Target Search Impression Share’ bidding. Instead of a goal of website traffic or ROAS, you can use this bidding strategy to appear more often for the keywords that are most important to your brand. While using Target Impression Share bidding won’t necessarily increase your traffic or conversion rates, it’s a great brand awareness tool and a good opportunity to outrank your competitors more frequently.
If you don’t want to change your bidding strategy to increase your SIS, there are a few other tactics to increase it. Ultimately, you’ll need to outbid and outrank your competitors. Start by identifying where you’re missing out on opportunities by using the metrics above to understand if it’s budget, rank, or a combination of both. Again, these metrics are calculated at the campaign, ad group, and keyword level. Then, address these by either increasing your daily budgets and bids or improving your ad rank.
Another opportunity to increase your SIS is by reducing the size of your target audience. This could be done by reducing the geography of your targeting as well as tweaking audience device types, demographics, or custom audiences. An important caveat here is that, although your SIS may increase with this strategy, your total available impressions will decrease due to the smaller audience size.
6. Is Impression Share Data Available for All Campaign Types?
At the time of writing, Impression Share data is available for Search, Display, and Shopping campaigns.
On Display campaigns, the relevant metrics are ‘Display Search Impression Share’, ‘Display lost IS (rank)’, and ‘Display lost IS (budget’). These work the same as SIS but only apply to Display campaigns across the relevant display network (Google Display Network or Microsoft Audience Network).
7. Search Impression Share Metrics
There are a few other SIS-related metrics to be mindful of and monitor.
Absolute Top Search Impression Share: This is a measure of not only how often you appear on the SERP, but how often you appear at the absolute top position on the page. This is only available to one advertiser for every search, so is an elusive position to be in!
Search Exact Match Impression Share: This is the same metric as SIS, based only on Exact Match (with very close variants) of your keywords.
Search Lost Absolute Top Impression Share (Budget): A measure of how often your campaigns, ad groups, or keywords have missed out on the very top spot on the SERP due to budget.
Search Lost Absolute Top Impression Share (Rank): A measure of how often your campaigns, ad groups, or keywords have missed out on the very top spot on the SERP due to rank.
Final Thoughts On Search Impression Share
While Search Impression Share is an important metric, it’s not the be-all-and-end-all for all advertisers. Ultimately, if your end goal is traffic generation or driving conversions from your ads, there are bidding strategies more suited to this. However, SIS is a valuable metric to keep an eye on how competitive your ads are, and where you may be missing out on opportunities for increased visibility for your brand.
