Share of search in Chile 2026: the most searched telecom and supermarket brands

Updated on November 2, 2026 with Google Trends data for the 52 weeks between November 2, 2025 and October 31, 2026.

Share of search is the portion of a category's searches that goes to each brand. If 27 out of every 100 searches for telecom companies in Chile are for "Entel", Entel's share of search is 27%. It is a cheap, fast metric and, according to British researcher Les Binet, one of the best leading indicators of market share.

We measured it in two mass-consumer categories in Chile: telecoms and supermarkets. In telecoms, Entel leads with 27.2%, but Movistar (25.1%) and Claro (22.4%) follow closely. In supermarkets, Lider takes 53% of searches, more than Jumbo, Santa Isabel, Tottus and Unimarc combined.

What share of search is and why it predicts market share

The idea was presented by Les Binet at the IPA's EffWorks Global conference on October 14, 2020. The IPA is the UK's trade body for advertising agencies. According to the IPA's official summary, Binet compared brand searches with sales in three UK categories (cars, energy and mobile phones) and found that share of search correlates with market share in all three. In cars, search led sales by up to a year.

The logic is simple: people search before they buy. If a brand gains search interest, it is likely to gain sales later; if it loses it, that is an early warning. Binet himself cautioned that it is not a perfect predictor, because price and other factors also shape purchases, and because not all searches are positive: a crisis also triggers searches.

For a brand, share of search complements share of voice, which measures the portion of mentions in media and social networks, and market share, which usually arrives months later. On the blog we explain how to run brand benchmarking on social media, the other side of that comparison.

Share of search for telecom companies in Chile

We compared the five brand names in Google Trends: entel, movistar, claro, wom and vtr. We added up each brand's weekly interest over 52 weeks and calculated its percentage of the total.

Entel27.2%

Movistar25.1%

Claro22.4%

WOM15.1%

VTR10.2%

Source: Google Trends, Chile, Nov 2, 2025-Oct 31, 2026 (52 weeks), queried on November 2, 2026. Calculation: ESBUENISIMO LINKS

View the data as a table

Entel	27.2%
Movistar	25.1%
Claro	22.4%
WOM	15.1%
VTR	10.2%

The trend is where it gets interesting: Movistar is losing ground (from 25.7% in the first half to 22.9% in the last four weeks) and Claro is gaining it (from 21.8% to 24.0%). If Binet's thesis holds, it is a signal worth checking against the line and connection figures published by Chile's Undersecretariat of Telecommunications (Subtel) in the coming quarters.

A warning about Claro: "claro" is also a common Spanish word meaning "clear" or "of course". Google Trends counts every search containing the term, so part of its share may have nothing to do with the company. That is why its trend matters more than its exact level.

Share of search for supermarkets in Chile

Supermarkets are far more concentrated. We compared lider, jumbo, unimarc, santa isabel and tottus with the same method.

Lider53.0%

Jumbo23.3%

Santa Isabel8.6%

Tottus7.8%

Unimarc7.3%

Source: Google Trends, Chile, Nov 2, 2025-Oct 31, 2026 (52 weeks), queried on November 2, 2026. Calculation: ESBUENISIMO LINKS

View the data as a table

Lider	53.0%
Jumbo	23.3%
Santa Isabel	8.6%
Tottus	7.8%
Unimarc	7.3%

Lider's two highest weeks of the year line up exactly with Chile's two big ecommerce events: the week of CyberDay (June 1 to 3, 2026, according to CNN Chile) hits the maximum of 100, and CyberMonday week (October 5 to 7) reaches 99. Jumbo, by contrast, peaks in Christmas week.

Read this with care too: "líder" (leader), "jumbo" and "Santa Isabel" (a metro station, several streets and a town in Puerto Rico) have other meanings. Lider's lead is so wide that the noise does not change the conclusion, but the gaps between Santa Isabel, Tottus and Unimarc are too small to draw strong conclusions.

Why brand searches also matter in AI

Brand searches do not only anticipate sales. They are also linked to visibility in Google's generated answers. In an analysis of 75,000 brands published in May 2025, Ahrefs found a 0.392 correlation between branded search volume and appearing in AI Overviews. The most closely linked factor was brand mentions across the web (0.664).

All four feed each other. A brand that appears in the media gains searches; a brand that is searched and mentioned more is more likely to appear when someone asks AI. We explain how to measure that last piece in how to measure your presence in AI, and how to improve it in how to get mentioned by AI.

How to measure your brand's search share

Any marketing or communications team can do it for free in an afternoon:

1. Define the category and competitors, up to five brands per comparison, which is Google Trends' maximum.
2. Use the name people actually type, without "Chile" or other additions, and note which brands have ambiguous names.
3. Pick 12 months so that seasonality (Christmas, cyber events, back to school) does not distort the result.
4. Add up each brand's interest and divide by the total. Leave out the current week, which is incomplete.
5. Repeat every month and look at the trend more than the level.

If your brand is losing search share or does not show up when someone asks ChatGPT about your category, the work lies in earning presence in the media and sources that people and AI consult. That is what we do as a GEO agency at ESBUENISIMO LINKS.

Methodology and limitations

We queried Google Trends on November 2, 2026, with location Chile, period "past 12 months" and web search. We ran two comparisons of five terms each, in lowercase and with no additions. We excluded the week of November 1 to 7, 2026 because it was incomplete, which left 52 weeks. Each brand's share of search is the sum of its weekly values divided by the sum for all brands in the comparison.

The limitations: Google Trends provides normalized, rounded data from 0 to 100, not absolute volumes; it counts every search containing the term, even if it refers to something else; and it only compares five terms at a time. That is why the percentages are useful to compare brands within a category and their evolution, not across categories. We wanted to add airlines, delivery apps and car brands, but Google Trends throttled our queries; we will add them in the next update.