Hi All,

Still thinking of the best approach / way to handle the recent change in the way Google's 25th Feb formula change, has effected rankings.
i.e. their pushing / promoting of brands in top rank position for "generic" "keyword" search results.
Note: at the moment this is only USA based change (is not showing up in other market search results) - but is meant to role out world-wide soon!!!....

To understand a little more on this change - see http://www.seobook.com/google-branding

Personally I find this change absurd - as it actually weakens the broad scope of search engine terms... really, if we wanted "brands" to return in results, for a "generic keyword" we would all type "Brand + Keyword" - basically this bias in determining results, really undermines what a search engine is about.
It also results in big being top - not best / quality being top (death of unique, new players perhaps even)!
I also think it will lead to a drop in ad spending for google - as the big brands can all stop spending (and their will be not much incentive for others to spend and never appear with the top brands) - but that is off topic of this post.

I also wonder with the weak basis Google has for "brand names" in many of the new language markets, if this will result in important "local / regional" brands being left out, in favour of less popular USA brands (just as Google can identify USA brands better)... personally I am considering dropping Google as my preferred search engine solution!

Anyway back to the point of the post...
This really effects how we all handle "keywords" and other "SEO" factors - to try and counter-act the power / advantage now being given to the "big brands".

So I am wondering, has anyone here so far, decided on a NEW strategy (shift in focus) to counter-act this change?
i.e. what changes are others making in their SEO strategy based on this?

I hope to get some useful feedback from some of you on this - as it seems the biggest thing to hit search engine rankings in a long long time.

Cheers all - Asiaplay

BUMP...

Any ideas / response link assistant staff?
(I know you always have some good comments)

Otherwise wondering if everyone else here has their heads buried in the sand...
comments anyone else?

Cheers - Asiaplay

Hi Andrew,
here are the first thoughts: we totally agree that the "brand-based" ranking will hardly make the search better... So not even sure that this kind of ranking will stay there for a long time.
Anyway, what we're doing right now is trying to figure out the source from where the "brands" come - and how Google decides if you're a brand or not.
Will be posting updates later...

Hi Linkassistant,

Very happy to hear you are doing some research on it - as potentially kills SEO if it is not "brand" related... and even then it might...

I am thinking of how to "better" position things as brands in non-ascii languages... e.g. possible hub solution thoughts for "brands" and also adding "brand" to words to make it obvious which word is a brand etc.

Very interested to hear what you find out from your research / review on this - thanks again, Asiaplay

I've been thinking about this and I disagree that "brands" is what Google is looking for in their alogs. First how would they go about doing that - well they would look for authority, be it link authority or you site mentioned on other sites that are authorities, etc... Thus I think this subject has been looked at the wrong way, it's authority that Google is looking for not brand. Matt Cutts even mentioned this in an interview that I watched on WebProNews in response to people thinking "brand" is an algo factor.

Hi SEOSean,

Yes - to a degree I think you are right... it is authority (that is why we don't see airline names appearing for "airline tickets", but instead see travel sites)... however it also appears that really Google is only giving "authority" (perhaps also pagerank position) to "established" "brands"... so the problem remains the same... i.e. how does anyone "new" ever get more or equal authority to that of an established brand?

Perhaps why we are also seeing this only in the USA so far, is that, that is the only market where google has applied authority so strongly to brands (and also I dare say, it seems that major brands in an industry e.g. fashion, within the USA, are also powerfully networking to ensure that they all have strong pagerank jointly).

Thanks for comments on this - I do appreciate this feedback and discussion - cheers, Asiaplay

Just wondering what findings / conclusions you might have come to?

Thanks - Asiaplay