How the Brand Velocity Score Works
The Brand Velocity Score (BVS) measures how hard a company is pushing its brand right now — not how big it is. A well-funded company coasting on past momentum scores low. A scrappy player winning keyword rankings and building brand awareness scores high.
The Core Principle
BVS is a composite of three signals sampled weekly. Each signal captures a different dimension of marketing effort and market presence. The score is always relative — companies are measured against the index, not against an absolute scale.
“Brand velocity is not brand size. A $50M ARR company moving fast beats a $500M ARR company standing still.”
The 3 Active Signals
Measures the relative search interest for a company's brand name over the past 7 days in the United States, via Google Trends. Scores are on a 0–100 scale from Google's normalization. High brand search signals that buyers are actively looking for the company by name — unaided awareness.
Measures a company's organic search presence — total keywords ranking and estimated monthly visits from Google, normalized within category so company size doesn't skew comparisons. The largest weight in BVS because broad organic presence is the most durable, compounding signal in B2B.
Position-weighted score across the top non-branded keywords this company ranks for. Ranking #1 for a 100K/mo search term is worth far more than ranking #8 for the same term. Filters out branded queries — this signal measures category-level keyword authority, not just brand name recognition.
Reserved for Phase 2 — will measure brand presence in Google AI Overviews across top category research queries. Currently weighted at 0% while the methodology is finalized.
Search Positioning — Diagnostic View
Below the leaderboard score cards, the Search Positioning panel surfaces three diagnostic views drawn from the same organic search data that powers Search Authority and Keyword Quality. These views are not part of the BVS score — they're there so a CMO can see why a score looks the way it does.
Non-branded search terms where two or more tracked brands are both ranking — head-to-head battles for the same demand. Race bars show each brand's share of the captured traffic (estimated monthly visits).
Branded queries (searches containing a company's own name — e.g. “drift bot”, “snyk cli”) where the company is not rank #1. Somebody else — a competitor, review site, or directory — is capturing that high-intent traffic. A CMO can use this list as an action punchlist: get us to #1 on our own name.
The highest-volume non-branded keyword in each category where a tracked brand ranks in the top 5 — and who owns it. Shows who's winning the biggest conversations in each market.
Keyword Momentum
Keyword Momentum tracks how this brand's top 10 non-branded category keywords are moving in rank week over week. It's the CMO-grade view of organic search: are you winning the terms buyers actually search?
For each of the top 10 non-branded keywords this week, compare rank to last week. Net = improved + newly entered − declined.
Why this signal, not raw index churn
A domain's total keyword pool contains thousands of low-rank, low-traffic terms that churn constantly. Counting every move across the long tail produces a number dominated by noise — mostly negative, because tail keywords are easier to lose than gain. That's not a signal a CMO can use.
Top 10 non-branded rank deltas map directly to pipeline. “We moved from #5 to #2 on marketing automation platform” is the kind of movement that shows up in demos and board decks. Branded searches (e.g. “grafana pricing”) are filtered out because they reflect existing demand, not capture of new demand.
How to read it
- ▲ improved — keyword moved up in rank vs last week
- ▼ declined — keyword moved down in rank
- flat — same rank as last week
- NEW — entered the top 10 this week (wasn't tracked before)
The summary chip on the leaderboard shows the net: ▲ +3 means three more positions gained than lost across the top 10. ▼ −2 means the reverse.
Update schedule
Compared against the previous weekly snapshot. Requires at least two weeks of data — new brands and weeks without a prior snapshot will show “available after next update.”
Example
Grafana Labs: top 10 non-branded keywords include “observability,” “prometheus dashboard,” and “log aggregation.” Week over week: 4 improved, 2 declined, 3 flat, 1 new to top 10. Net = 4 + 1 − 2 = +3. Gaining ground on the terms that matter.
Score Bands
The Index
The Brand Games tracks 50 mid-market B2B technology companies across six categories: Marketing & Sales Tech, Security, DevTools & Cloud, Data & Analytics, Customer Experience, and HR & Ops.
Companies are selected to represent the competitive landscape a mid-market B2B buyer encounters — established enough to have a real marketing presence, active enough to generate weekly signals.
Scores are recalculated every Monday morning using data collected over the prior 7 days. The index is updated weekly — what you see is the most recent week.
What BVS Is Not
BVS does not measure revenue, company size, product quality, or customer satisfaction. It measures observable marketing effort and market interest — the signals a competitor or investor can see without access to internal data.
A high BVS score means a company is active and visible. It does not guarantee they are winning more deals.
Data Sources
If your company isn't in the index and you want to see your BVS, submit your domain below. We'll score it and email you the results.
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