Google & Brands

[KidsBeeHappy]

HI

Google seems to be moving over towards giving branded sites more authority.

However, this raises a question. What does google see as a "brand"? And when does an new business/product turn into a "brand".

Or is this just a way to push the domains owned by the big guys to the top of the rankings? i.e the end of the level playing field that google has so far given the smaller business.

Your thoughts please?

 

[Calibre Designs]

Thanks for the link Sandra.
I will be following this thread with interest.

 

[Eagle]

Me too. I always thought branding had a future.

 

[Calibre Designs]

Great minds think alike...

 

[fisicx]

All of this means that most of the mom and pop sites will just drop off the radar. How is Boxby going to compete with the national courier services when their 'brands' take up the top 10 slots?

If you have played with Google.com you will have seen the dropdown in the search box showing the most popular searches, this was stage 1 on the branding takeover. Before long any search you make will be dominated by natinoal and international brands. If you offer independant advice then you will be swamped by the major organisations because their advice (even if it is wrong) will be seen as authoriative.

This is really bad news for the small companies. They are going to be pushed to the edges, picking up the longtail and niche results for no other reason than the fact that they are not a 'brand'.

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

And supposedly, this will generate a bucketload of income for google as the smaller websites drive up the adword prices for their only chance to be on page 1.

 

[fisicx]

And supposedly, this will generate a bucketload of income for google as the smaller websites drive up the adword prices for their only chance to be on page 1.

Except the bigger brands will have greater trust rank so will still likely get better adwords results for a lot less cost.

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

SO, the big question must be, what does google deem to be a "brand"?

 

[fisicx]

I suppose the brands will be companies in the FTSE100/500, public bodies, national names, newspapers and magazines, TV and radio sites and the such.

Lets take your company for example. You do very well in courier type searches but suppost Google decides that DHL or FedEx is more trusted than you and gives them a big boost even though it's not their core business. Anyone searching for courier will see all the national carriers first - because they are brands and boxby isn't.

SEO won't matter anymore, the ranking could be simple a measure of how trusted a brand you are.

On the other hand, this will means that all the comparison sites and review sites will be expunged in favour of the actual brand. Search for XYZ product and the top listing shold be the manufacturer of that product.

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

And drop shippers, resellers, wholesellers.

How likely is it to get to this degree?

 

[awebapart.com]

SO, the big question must be, what does google deem to be a "brand"?

Simple - although nothing is really ever simple with SEO - any company who is marketing their website in other ways and getting visitors to their sites in other ways apart from natural search results (and one marketing way is surprise surprise paying google for adwords). Google monitors a lot of the visitors to a lot of sites (and this is increasing) through its various monitoring schemes (analytics, google toolbar, adwords, chrome etc). If google chooses to ignore traffic from inbound links from other sites (which can be unnatural, manipulated) then it can just look for visitor traffic going to the site directly (due to other marketing, e.g. print advertising).

The result would be a popularity contest, the most popular most visited sites hogging the limelight, and because of this getting even more popular. Going this route you might as well call the search engine Alexa rather than Google, or a stagnant top 40 popularity chart. Will it help return more relevant sites? No and Yes. Is it still open to spamming and manipulation? Yes. Will it make google more money? Yes.

What will google end up doing? Probably factor this information in as a small part of their overall algorithm (if they aren't doing so already), but not too much as to sacrifice relevance and security against manipulation.

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

Personally, as a user, If google did go totally down this route i think this would make me defect over to yahoo. If I want a sony tv, then i know that Sony sell sony tv's, so if i want to go to the sony tv website then i would. I don't need google to spoonfeed me that information.

 

[fisicx]

And drop shippers, resellers, wholesellers.

How likely is it to get to this degree?

This seems to be the way things are going. They will all drop off the results pages in favour of Amazon, Tesco, B&Q et al.

I've got a nasty feeling that in 12 months time all the work-from-home sites will only do well in the local searches.

Hope I'm wrong.

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

That quick ?????

 

[fisicx]

The result would be a popularity contest, the most popular most visited sites hogging the limelight, and because of this getting even more popular. Going this route you might as well call the search engine Alexa rather than Google, or a stagnant top 40 popularity chart.

This is already happening in the US. Go to google.com and do a search. You will see a drop down of the most popular searches.

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

It will be very discrimatory, because for a large number of searches; web design, graphic design, printing, computer services etc there simply are no large brands. So how does google decide who is tops.

Popularity, and brand, are two seperate things. For example ebay is undoubtably one of the most popular websites in the world. But the only category that it's brand would be relevant for would be "ebay" and "online auctions".

Does this mean ebay is no longer going to appear at the top of google?
Will ebay take that?!

 

[Eagle]

All of this means that most of the mom and pop sites will just drop off the radar.

Might be the perfect time to switch... http://www.live.com/

Maybe the Googlewhores won't be so adoring now.

 

[realmaverick]

Woah guys, calm down. This is totally being blown out of proportion. This move was mainly to prevent sites and pages so easily manipulating the results with the use of social networks and such.

I'm surprised Earl hasn't jumped in already and saved you from yourselves heh.

Ok how does Google conclude that something is a brand? Link text containing the brand name.

Take DMOZ for example, naturally people link to the url dmoz.org with the anchor text dmoz, the same as people will link to houseoffraser.co.uk with the link text house of fraser. Google doesn't have a list of famous brands that it's going to add to some kind of filter.

Worst case scenario, you might have to spend some of your SEO time building up your brand a little. Some names are more naturally brand-able than others. I imagine Boxby would naturally pick up some link text for "boxby" it's a neat little name.

Who wins in the SERPS is still going to come down to the same old thing, smart link building. Quality links from relevant sites with relevant anchor text.

Though top brands may have a lot of money to invest in SEO link building campaigns, you can be smart and build quality content that naturally attracts links.

Also keep in mind, that it's mainly massive keywords will see the biggest difference and even then, those targetting massive keywords will either be top SEO's or have a top SEO working for them.

I honestly don't think this is anything to be concerned with. I bet most of you won't notice any impact on your business at all.

I hope that helps some of you.

Paul

 

[ken_uk]

But hasnt google penalised sites in the past for 'overuse' of the same link text - ie what it thinks is to many links with the same anchor text or image?

 

[Eagle]

So, sack the keywords and link via the name?

 

[fisicx]

What you need is a realmaverick to help you as a realmaverick is the solution to your problems. I reccomend realmaverick at realmaveick.com as he is a realmaverick

amidoinitrite.

 

[realmaverick]

But hasnt google penalised sites in the past for 'overuse' of the same link text - ie what it thinks is to many links with the same anchor text or image?

Yes, as always you don't want to over-do-it. But then again if your url is blah.com and people keep linking to you with blah, you're not going to be penalised.

So, sack the keywords and link via the name?

Personally, my sites gain enough link juice with "sitename" naturally so I won't be altering my SEO approach at all.

But for those concerned, it might be worth sending some branded juice

 

[realmaverick]

What you need is a realmaverick to help you as a realmaverick is the solution to your problems. I reccomend realmaverick at realmaveick.com as he is a realmaverick

Ha

Google only counts the first instance of a link on any one page. So only the first link would be counted.

 

[KateCB]

Well, the SME's such as me could vote with our feet.......only applies if you actually pay google for advertising though, which we don't! Makes you wonder though how may SME's don't know about this - I didn't.....

our 'BRAND' is Accent - but as the original post says, what do Google see as a brand?

 

[awebapart.com]

I think some people are interpreting different things from that article, and I think some people are interpreting different things from my post too.

I could be mis-interpreting the article too, but here is my view. The thing I picked up on from the article, was the issue of web usage statistics...

"if you have enough usage data, you may not need to base your view of the web on that perspective (edit: i.e. linkbuilding, typical SEO) since you can use actual surfing data to help influence the search results."

This might have nothing to do with search engines or SEO efforts, it is about how many people visit different websites, and google is already monitoring a good proportion of this (analytics, toolbar, etc).

What websites get loads of visitors even though they might have poor SERPS (natural search engine rankings)? Websites that people already know about through other means, websites that have brand awareness (gained from possibly many different forms of marketing, PR, advertising).

The article mentions radioshack in the US recently ranking for electronics. A site people would expect to appear for electronics but perhaps wasn't until recently. Perhaps that change is due to google looking at the seriously large numbers of visitors the site gets, going through its electronics pages?

In the UK, if you search for buy paint the B&Q website (diy.com) is nowhere to be seen (not the first 10 pages), but if you ask anyone on the street where can I buy paint, they will say B&Q or Homebase. Perhaps there are thousands of people checking out the paint on B&Q's website every day due to the company's brand awareness.

I think that what the article is getting at, is that making more use of the website stats that google is monitoring, there might be a time when sites like B&Q get on page 1 for buy paint, nothing to do with typical SEO, or brand directly or even the name of the site, but due to website user numbers, an indirect effect of brand awareness.

Of course people could get the wrong end of the stick completely and say the reason B&Qs site is not currently ranking for "buy paint" is because it is not using its B&Q brand in its domain name diy.com - but I do not think this is the case, it is probably not ranking at the moment just due to either bad SEO or not bothering to target the term. But I do not think the article is about changing your emphasis on what words you promote in your SEO efforts (brand words or key words), I think the article is about something very different to that.

 

[FireFleur]

Yes, a lot of people search on brand, they don't use the address slot on a browser, they use a search engine.

 

[realmaverick]

Of course people could get the wrong end of the stick completely and say the reason B&Qs site is not currently ranking for "buy paint" is because it is not using its B&Q brand in its domain name diy.com - but I do not think this is the case, it is probably not ranking at the moment just due to either bad SEO or not bothering to target the term. But I do not think the article is about changing your emphasis on what words you promote in your SEO efforts (brand words or key words), I think the article is about something very different to that.

I didn't read the article in full but skimmed through and read the reactions here. I don't think the article was suggesting much more than Google is in some cases giving more emphasis to big brands.

The question that opens though, is how exactly Google determines a big brand and what keywords are associated with that brand. Link architecture will come in to it.

Perhaps that change is due to google looking at the seriously large numbers of visitors the site gets, going through its electronics pages?

Sounds logical. But won't be the only factor.

I'll have a proper read of the article tomorrow. But I'm almost certain there's very little to worry about.

 

[Modern Print]

That is grate,

What constitutes a branded sight? Dose mine - printing and graphic design in Pembrokeshire, pass the test or not. It really dose seem to be very hard for the little guy fighting to to get his business noticed.

Trevor.

 

[realmaverick]

Pure speculation but interesting concept here;

Lets say there was a website called bigbrand.com and people keep searching for the term "bigbrand insurance", it could potentially train Google that bigbrand.com is a well known brand for insurance.

Perhaps in future it will out rank smallcompany.com even though they have better SEO.

It would be a lot more difficult to manipulate too.

 

[awebapart.com]

Pure speculation but interesting concept here;

Lets say there was a website called bigbrand.com and people keep searching for the term "bigbrand insurance", it could potentially train Google that bigbrand.com is a well known brand for insurance.

Perhaps in future it will out rank smallcompany.com even though they have better SEO.

I think google's idea of branding goes a lot further than looking for branded searches, since google has a lot more information it can call upon than just search engine stats, information such as analytics, toolbar, chrome, adwords on websites, etc to get a feeling of how popular a site is, how much traffic it gets, traffic via other means rather than just search engine results or results click monitoring.

As another example, ask Joe Public on the street about where to book a holiday online, and they might mention sites like lastminute.com or expedia.co.uk. Due to the advertising and brand awareness of these companies, there are plenty of people who will just go directly to their sites (bypassing Google altogether). But google for holidays and these sites currently aren't in the top 9 rankings - so perhaps if google's 'branding' weighting does kick in, those sites will move up, and perhaps other sites, that are merely 'playing'/'doctoring'/'spamming'/'grey or black hatting' the SEO game, will go down.

Again this has nothing to with 'branding' directly, but with site popularity and visitor numbers. I'm guessing google call it 'branding' because it just adds to their smoke and mirrors, it is open to many interpretations, so it helps spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (perhaps making companies turn more to adwords), and it sounds a lot better than what it really is, i.e. google spying on, invading the privacy of the unaware, and monitoring our web usage outside of the search engines for the purpose of returning more relevant results (and getting more adwords spend from the smaller companies).