TL;DR
- Brand Terms are managed under Settings > AI Visibility in Microsoft Clarity, and Clarity pre-fills the first list for each site.
- Microsoft's example groups Microsoft, MS and Microsoft Corporation under the Brand Name Microsoft; the dashboard filters by Brand Name or by one term.
- The branded and non-branded split arrived in August 2026 (Relevant Audience covered it on 4 August 2026); only the editable term list is new.
- Microsoft's 29 September 2026 post does not state the matching method, whether history is reclassified, how fast edits apply, or any term limit.
Microsoft Clarity now lets site owners edit the list of Brand Terms that decides whether an AI query counts as branded in its AI Visibility dashboard. Microsoft announced the change on 29 September 2026 in a Clarity blog post under a Clarity Staff byline. Owners can add, edit or remove terms under Settings > AI Visibility, starting from a list that Clarity fills in automatically.
What Microsoft changed in Clarity on 29 September 2026
The 29 September 2026 Clarity post describes four parts to the update. The first is management. Brand Terms can be added, edited or removed from Settings > AI Visibility so the list reflects how a site's brands, products and business are referred to. Clarity pre-populates the first version of the list, and Microsoft calls it a starting point that owners can refine.
The second part is variation. Microsoft says a brand can show up in AI queries as an abbreviation, an alternate spelling, a localized name, a translation or a common typo, and each of those forms can now be added as a Brand Term. Its own example uses the company name: a Brand Name such as Microsoft could carry the Brand Terms Microsoft, MS and Microsoft Corporation.
The third part is structure. Related Brand Terms sit under a parent Brand Name. In the dashboard, a filter on the Brand Name returns results across every term grouped under it, while selecting a single Brand Term shows how that one variant performs.
The fourth part is upkeep. According to Microsoft, keeping Brand Names and Brand Terms current helps Clarity recognise the queries tied to a brand, which it says improves classification accuracy and reporting quality.
What is new and what Relevant Audience already covered in August
The branded and non-branded split itself is not new. Microsoft's Clarity blog says the segmentation arrived in the citation dashboard in August 2026, and Relevant Audience reported that release on 4 August 2026. That August update added branded labels to individual queries in the queries card, split the Share of Authority card by branded and non-branded queries, and added filters so dashboard data could be viewed for either group. Clarity described the queries being classified as grounding queries, the look-ups an AI system runs to find supporting information for an answer.
What the August release did not give users was any say over what counted as branded. The 29 September 2026 update is about exactly that input. The split stays the same; the list that drives it is now editable, can hold variants, and can be grouped and filtered at two levels. Anyone who read the August coverage and wondered how Clarity decided a query was branded now has a partial answer: there is a Clarity-generated term list underneath, and site owners can change it.
The dashboard image Microsoft published is an illustration
The image attached to Microsoft's 29 September 2026 post shows two cards, Branded SoA at 53.83% and Non-branded SoA at 16.24%, with a pencil icon and an "Edit brand names" tooltip on the branded card. Below them is a panel with a "New brand name" button and a two-column table headed "Brand name" and "Alias". These figures belong to a product illustration, not to a study or a benchmark, and they should not be quoted as typical shares.
The rows in the image are still useful, because they show the kind of entry Microsoft expects. "Alpine ski" carries the aliases Alpine, Alpine sik and Alpien ski. "Alpine ski house" carries Alpine ski home and Alpin ski house. Several of those are keyboard slips: a transposed pair of letters, a dropped letter, a shortened form. They match the "common typos" category in the post's text. The image labels the column "Alias" while the text says "Brand Terms", and the post does not say whether these are the same field, although the context suggests they are.
A summary of the change, from Microsoft's own post
The table below sets the 29 September 2026 update against the August 2026 release it builds on, using only what Microsoft's Clarity blog posts state.
| Item | What Microsoft's Clarity blog says |
|---|---|
| August 2026 release | Branded vs non-branded segmentation of grounding queries in the citation dashboard, with branded labels, a split Share of Authority card and filters |
| 29 September 2026 release | Brand Terms can be added, edited or removed under Settings > AI Visibility |
| Starting list | Pre-populated by Clarity, presented as a starting point to refine |
| Variants Microsoft names | Abbreviations, alternate spellings, localized names, translations, common typos (example: Microsoft, MS, Microsoft Corporation) |
| Filtering | By Brand Name across all its terms, or by one Brand Term |
What Microsoft's post does not say
Several practical questions go unanswered in the 29 September 2026 post, and they matter for anyone planning to compare figures over time.
- Matching method. The post does not say whether a query is matched to a term by exact match, by substring, or with some tolerance for misspelling. The typo-style aliases in the illustration suggest variants have to be listed rather than detected, but that is an inference from a picture, not a statement.
- History. It does not say whether editing the list reclassifies past queries or only affects data collected afterwards.
- Timing. It does not say how quickly a change to the list shows up in the dashboard.
- Limits. No maximum number of Brand Names or Brand Terms is given.
- Languages. Translations and localized names are named as valid terms, but the post does not say which query languages the dashboard covers, so Thai-language coverage is not confirmed.
Access is a separate question. PPC Land, reporting on the release, noted that Microsoft has said AI Visibility features are available only for eligible website categories, and the 29 September post does not revisit that. On pricing, the Clarity blog's page footer describes the product as free with no limits on traffic; the post itself carries no pricing note.
Why the term list changes the numbers (analysis)
The following is Relevant Audience analysis, not a Microsoft statement. A term-based split can go wrong in two directions. If a common variant is missing from the list, a query that really is about the brand lands in the non-branded group. That lowers the branded share and inflates the non-branded one, which can make a site look better at earning citations on generic category queries than it is. If a term is too broad, for example a brand name that is also an ordinary word, generic queries get pulled into the branded group and the opposite distortion appears.
Two practical consequences follow. First, two sites with identical citation records can report different branded and non-branded splits simply because their lists differ, so cross-site comparisons of these shares need care. Second, a site's own trend line can shift on the day its list is edited. Because the post does not say whether history is reclassified, it is sensible to note the date of any list change and read movements around that date with caution.
The non-branded figure is the one most teams will care about for generative engine optimisation work, because it indicates whether a site is being cited when the AI system was not already looking for it by name. That figure is only as clean as the term list behind it.
What this means for Thai marketers
This section is Relevant Audience analysis. Thai brands are a clear case for the variant types Microsoft lists. A single Thai business can be referred to in Thai script, in one or more romanised spellings, and by an English trading name that differs from its Thai name. Romanisation of Thai is inconsistent in everyday use, so the same name can appear with different vowels or doubled consonants. Typing in the wrong keyboard layout is another familiar error in Thailand, and it produces strings that look nothing like the intended word.
Take a hypothetical Bangkok café trading in English as "Baan Kafae". It might appear in queries under its Thai-script name, as "Ban Kafae" or "Baan Gafae", and with its English and Thai names mixed. Microsoft's own categories (localized names, translations, alternate spellings, typos) cover every one of those forms, so a Thai brand list built with care is likely to be longer than the pre-filled one. What remains unconfirmed is whether Clarity's AI Visibility data includes Thai-language grounding queries at all, and how a Thai-script term would be matched. Those are worth testing on a live property before relying on the split in reporting.
A reasonable first pass, for sites that have AI Visibility enabled, is to review the pre-filled list, add Thai-script and romanised variants, add the English and Thai trading names under one Brand Name, add product names if they are searched on their own, and record the date. Teams already working on AI SEO can then read the non-branded share against the date of that edit.
FAQ
What did Microsoft Clarity change on 29 September 2026?
Microsoft made the Brand Terms behind Clarity's branded and non-branded AI query split editable, so site owners can add, edit or remove terms under Settings > AI Visibility. Terms are grouped under a Brand Name, and the dashboard can be filtered by Brand Name or by a single Brand Term.
Is the branded and non-branded split itself new?
No, the split arrived in Clarity's citation dashboard in August 2026 and Relevant Audience covered it on 4 August 2026. The new part is control over the term list that decides which queries count as branded.
Does editing the Brand Terms list change past data?
Microsoft's post does not say. It also does not state the matching method, how fast changes take effect, or whether there is a limit on the number of terms, so it is sensible to log the date of every edit.
Can Thai names and spellings be added as Brand Terms?
Microsoft lists localized names, translations, alternate spellings and common typos as valid Brand Terms, which covers Thai-script and romanised forms in principle. The post does not confirm Thai-language query coverage or how Thai-script terms are matched.
Does the feature cost anything?
The post carries no pricing note, and the Clarity blog footer describes Clarity as free with no traffic limits. AI Visibility features have been described as available only for eligible website categories, so not every site will see the dashboard.
Where this leaves AI visibility reporting
Microsoft's 29 September 2026 update does not add a new metric. It hands site owners the input that decides how an existing metric is split, and it tells them the default list is only a start. For brands with several names, spellings and languages, that makes the branded and non-branded figures more useful, provided the list is maintained and edits are dated. Relevant Audience helps brands in Thailand measure and improve how AI systems cite them; see our GEO services for how that work is approached.
