162 brands fight over 38% of the conversation they already own -- while retailers, magazines, and Reddit split the other 62% without a fight.
Skip the fluff. Here's what the data actually says.
Share of Search = consumer attention = future market share.
162 brands, none breaking 11% share, with accessory brands (Smith, Oakley) punching above their weight through concentrated search equity while equipment brands spread thin.
Leakage doesn't happen in bulk. It happens model by model. Competitors don't fight for the whole brand -- they claim specific product families one at a time. Two examples from the dataset.
We mapped every intent signal in 92,666 queries. Not all dimensions are equal. Here's the hierarchy -- from the two that define the market to the ones barely worth tracking.
In skis, the top 3 NB performers are all retailers. In snowboard, Burton outperforms the top retailer. The structural opportunity is hardware, where brands have the widest gap between recognition and search performance.
First ski equipment brand to build comprehensive NB content enters an uncontested space against retailers that lack brand authority.
Equipment brands make women's products. They don't rank for women's searches. The same DTC content gap that drives leakage explains the women's visibility failure.
228K monthly searches with zero equipment brand competition. Any manufacturer that builds women-specific product pages with sizing tools and comparison content enters an uncontested space.
"228,690 women's searches per month. Equipment brands invisible."-- Search data, 2025
Editorial sites exceed every brand except Burton in NB volume. SKI Magazine alone captures 482K, nearly matching Burton's 547K.
Brands that create editorial-quality comparison content with transparent methodology can enter this conversation. The credibility threshold is helpfulness, not brand authority.
Jones and Nordica prove sizing tools rank. The remaining major brands have zero sizing content.
A $0-to-win opportunity. Size charts are product data brands already have. First brand to build comprehensive sizing tools across all categories captures 65K+ monthly searches.
Rossignol and Salomon both manufacture cross-country equipment but have no dedicated content hubs.
Cross-country (36K), touring (16K), and backcountry (13K) = 65K monthly searches from high-intent users with zero brand competition.
Both queries ask the same thing: "what's the best [thing] for all-mountain riding?" Snowboard brands show up to answer. Ski brands don't.
Every cell shows where a product overlaps with a search dimension. Brighter teal = higher monthly search volume. Blank cells mean that combination isn't a meaningful pattern in the data.
Every cell shows where two search dimensions overlap. Brighter = more searches. The numbers reveal where demand concentrates -- and where brands are absent.
What are the best all-mountain skis for an intermediate skier who wants one pair for everything?
12,914 queries already combine 3+ intent signals -- 476,800 monthly searches that look exactly like AI prompts.
The 15 highest-volume queries that stack three or more intent dimensions into a single search.
| # | Query | Volume | Dimensions | Top Rankers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | snowboard size chart | 15,000 | SizeChartSnowboard |
Jones #1Burton #2Evo #3 |
| 2 | ski boot size chart | 10,000 | MIPSHelmetSki |
REI #1OutdoorMaster #2Smith #6 |
| 3 | ski size chart | 8,500 | SizeChartSkis |
Powder7 #1Evo #2Nordica #3 |
| 4 | ski pants women | 5,700 | PantsWomenSki |
Obermeyer #1Roxy #2North Face #3 |
| 5 | what size snowboard should i get | 4,600 | SizeQuestionSnowboard |
Jones #1Evo #2Reddit #3 |
| 6 | ski length calculator | 3,600 | LengthCalculatorSkis |
Powder7 #1Nordica #3Evo #4 |
| 7 | ski length chart | 3,600 | LengthChartSkis |
Powder7 #1Nordica #2Evo #3 |
| 8 | best all mountain skis | 3,000 | All-MountainBestSkis |
SKI Magazine #1Ski Essentials #2Powder7 #3 |
| 9 | snowboard size calculator | 2,900 | SizeCalculatorSnowboard |
Jones #1Evo #3Burton #4 |
| 10 | waterproof ski jacket | 2,200 | WaterproofJacketSki |
REI #2Amazon #4Columbia #6 |
| 11 | what size skis do i need | 2,200 | SizeQuestionSkis |
Evo #1Powder7 #2REI #3 |
| 12 | mips ski helmet | 1,700 | MIPSHelmetSki |
REI #1OutdoorMaster #2Smith #6 |
| 13 | heated ski socks | 1,600 | HeatedSocksSki |
SKI Magazine #1Amazon #3REI #5 |
| 14 | beginner snowboard | 1,200 | BeginnerSnowboardLevel |
Burton #1Reddit #2Level Nine #3 |
| 15 | best beginner ski slope | 1,100 | BestBeginnerSlope |
SKI Magazine #1Reddit #2Snow Mag #8 |
Domains ranked by number of #1 positions across all triple-modifier queries.
Which intent dimension combos appear most often in triple-modifier queries.
Brands Are Spectators at Their Own Game
Burton is the best-performing brand in this entire market. They rank 7th overall. Behind Reddit. Behind YouTube. Behind REI, Amazon, and Evo -- none of which make a single product in this category. Behind Facebook. If Burton, a $1B+ company, ranks 7th, every other ski and snowboard brand is somewhere between 15 and 100. This is not a keyword problem. This is a content and DTC problem. And it is the specific thing we fix.
The brand layer is two deep. Between Burton (#7) and the next brand, Columbia (#16), there are 8 consecutive non-brand entities: a magazine, three retailers, two platforms, a media site, and a retailer again. The third brand in the rankings (K2) doesn't appear until #18. A 162-brand market has exactly two brands in the top 15 performers.
The damage isn't evenly distributed. Salomon alone leaks 66,270 -- more than most brands' entire branded volume. Rossignol, Volkl, and Atomic round out the top 4, together accounting for 192,520 monthly leaks. Every one of them is a ski equipment manufacturer. Every one of them ranks #1 less than half the time on searches for their own name.
This analysis is built on 92,666 unique search queries in the US ski and snowboard market, representing 4.47M monthly searches. Data sourced from Ahrefs, covering organic search positions (Top 30) across 162 brands and 100 tracked domains. Keywords were identified through seed keyword expansion via related and suggested queries. 27 need dimensions were identified and mapped. Brand defense is measured by #1 position ownership -- anything other than #1 on a branded query is classified as leakage.
Every report is built from the ground up for the brand commissioning it. No templates. No recycled slides. Here is what you receive.
Your exact leakage rate, the three retailers taking most of your traffic, and every branded keyword you're losing #1 on -- with monthly volume and estimated revenue impact.
Where you sit versus REI, Amazon, Evo, Reddit, and your 3 closest brand competitors. Non-branded Top 10 volume, keyword count, and category share, side by side.
100-200 keywords you should be ranking for but aren't, ranked by volume and difficulty. We flag the ones where retailers are beatable and the ones where they're not.
Women's, men's, and kids' search breakdown. Where you're present, where you're absent, and the category-specific volume you're missing (with named examples).
Quick wins (0-3 months), medium plays (3-6 months), and strategic shifts (6-12 months), each with expected recovery volume and effort estimate.
Which multi-modifier queries you could win in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. Which of your current pages are AI-citable. Which need to be rebuilt.
Request a custom search intelligence report for your brand. Defense score, competitor map, women's gap, opportunity list, and a ranked content playbook. Built the same way this one was. Book a 30-minute intro call below.