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February 26, 2009
Brands Hit Big In Google SERPs, Others Drop
Hats off to Aaron Wall for a great article about how Google has used brands as the basis for their most recent algorithm update.
Seems many sites have fallen from their comfortable front page rankings in preference for sites well branded in the niche for many of keywords impacted. Insurance companies, airline tickets and boots to name a few have suddenly seen well known but unoptimized sites shoot up in the rankings.
These results will no doubt send us SEOs running to the mattresses s we try to figure out how to counter this action by Google. Is it an increase in attention to trust rank? If these sites have not done any quiet SEO, then Google has obviously increased their worth on some basis - who is to say an airline deserves the better position for a travel search. Many small sites provide all types of support information not available.
To make this happen Google had to use some method to measure - brands do not shout out numbers that an algorithm can measure - in normal circumstances. Are they being rewarded for years of PPC spend - not likely.
My theory - and is only that - is they may be using some sort of measuring of typed in traffic numbers. But no doubt the methodology will be explore quite a bit over the coming weeks and be a major conversation piece at SES NYC next month.
Hey if you have any insights drop a comment.
Posted by Frank Watson on February 26, 2009 9:54 AM
Comments
Nathania February 26, 2009 10:31 AM
My theory is that they are using the type in data to determine your brand strength. How else would you determine what a brand is without manually doing it? Which Google shys away from doing anything manual to SERPs.
Brent Nau February 26, 2009 10:48 AM
It definitely is something to be monitored but potentially could be bigger than the Florida update that took a couple of weeks to shake out totally
Frank Watson 
February 26, 2009 10:56 AM
Could bounce rates have something to do with this change?
Lester February 26, 2009 3:36 PM
We're seeing this on the "cell phones" keyword and other high volume wireless keywords. I read that perhaps Google is factoring CTR into organic rankings more now, could that be an explanation? That would presumably factor large, known brands...
Dave February 26, 2009 4:16 PM
I was reading an interview with Aaron Wall today and he suggest smaller companies stick to longtail phrases and that they will be focusing the brand exposure on the core keywords.
Mercedes February 27, 2009 3:19 AM
@ Nathania
That's the Google Dance for you though and tends to happen for a few days after every change, sometimes with more severity than others.
I have a few theories on how they are doing it but would prefer to spend some more time looking into it before shouting like a crazy man :-)
Matthew Anderson February 27, 2009 7:16 AM
Results will not same in all time. initially the search result will good but after some time it will decrease.
narendra February 27, 2009 8:58 AM
It can still be done algorithmically; brands are synonymous with phrases - Coke with fizzy drink, Microsoft with software, etc. It doesn't take a huge leap to see how that could be applied within search.
Chris McGiffen February 27, 2009 11:01 AM
Big Trouble. When one company controls 85% of people's search activity PLUS is now starting to control the brands the masses consume, we are in biiiiig trouble. Google, "The God's Older Brother" at least follows the Golden Rule. He who has the gold, makes the rules.
Let's face it. Search sucks. It's the necessary evil of stepping through tens of artificially propped pages, going through machine written articles, dead-end garbage and hoping that somewhere there's an honest, non-ClickBank page that tells you what you want to know fast, concisely, and without zillion ad messages blinking in the peripheral vision.
Imagine if that happened when you walk to a retail store. First you'd force your way through tens of snake-oil salesmen seo'd to front of the store, then a bunch of circus clowns juggling animated .gif files into your face, then the "squeeze-page boys" and fraudulent salesmen, millions of affiliate marketers ... all wanting to know where you live so they can send 300 junk messages to your inbox tomorrow morning ... and somewhere at the back corner you might find the older gentlemen who can measure you up, suggest a cloth, and make you a suit.
It might have started with good, god-approved algorithms, but we people have a way of ruining everything ... now search on Google et al. is like looking for something valuable in a landfill site ... stinky, banal, inefficient way of accessing information ... and now we're going to have Mr. Coke, Mr. Pepsi, Mr. We-Own-Half-The-World-Wealth brands to deal with? Holy crap. We ARE in trouble. And going the WRONG way altogether. Say hello to Mr. Greed for me. Thanks.
John March 4, 2009 9:48 AM
Really a great argument but still it is not clear what is the Reason Google has done these changes and how much time this will remain on SERP? These changes is decreasing our business .
seo March 12, 2009 12:25 AM
I do not know what the reason is. I know what the reason should be: it should be about better relevance. From what I have seen in my mother tongue language (portuguese) results for searches in classical music are far worse than before ... Yes I may biased since from 50 visits on natural search I dropped to 5 ... well for me this is just an hobby but if it was a business ... Not good. Not good.
Fernando Vasconcelos April 14, 2009 8:29 PM
With the advent of Google Chrome we will see even more control of SERPS by the mighty Google. As always Google will keep us guessing and when you finaly guess right change the rules again. Keeps you SEO guys in business though.
Paging Systems April 17, 2009 11:53 AM
It's been a while since I have read a forum post like this. I feel like I need a shower. I have found that by focusing on adding quality content and trusted backlinks that Google performs admirably.
It looks like this post was all the talk for 2 or 3 days, then back to business as usual.
I don't think many of you were around in 2004 when the real Google slap happened. If you would have been you wouldn't be talking like this.
James Martell May 19, 2009 3:05 AM
The results are not consistent. It changes all the time.
Travel Philippines May 24, 2009 2:25 PM
This information is incorrect, google doesnt give any extra weight what so ever to brands in the serps.
This is a video from Matt Cutts who works for google and released this video on the 19/6/09.
This link will take you through to the youtube video itself, and it explains everything you need to know, Matt Cutts also mentions Aarons post http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMfWPWUh5uU&feature=channel
Michael Tedder June 20, 2009 3:33 AM
then a bunch of circus clowns juggling animated .gif files into your face, then the "squeeze-page boys" and fraudulent salesmen,
cell phone December 15, 2009 8:31 PM
Hello, your blog is wonderful, and it has so much useful knowleages. I like it very much!
nike tn January 15, 2010 1:20 AM
The results aren't consistent. You can literally see brands performing higher in SERPs in one search and then five hours later drop back down.