Google putting more weight to brands??
Matt Cutt’s from Google Web team tries to clear up an important question which most SEO’s always blog about and question –
Do Google put weight on brands in their SERP’s?
Watch Matt try to clear this up via the Google official Webmaster help channel from their very own YouTube -
I agree with OM React his post, Matt Cutt tries too hard and uses a random topic to try and back up Google’s results.
Aaron Wall @ SEO Book has always questioned the results and asked the question which prompted the video response from Matt Cutt.
Personally I do read all three blogs and follow the three on Twitter, this one debate has been going for quite a while now and begs the question why come out and defend the way the search engine pulls back results.
For those who do not understand the argument or the severity, basically imagine searching for something specific on your favourite search engine (Google in this case) and in the top ten results pulled back you have 6 or 7 big brands returning. To most users this would not upset or annoy many generic searches, however when you are a smaller fish and competing with the big fish, you work hard on content, making your site as user friendly as possible and followed all the guidelines the search engines enforce suggests and you still appear on page 2, 3 or 4. This has a real detrimental effect on your business, especially if you are a web based company. Did you know that less than 30% of people ever go to the second page of search engine results, that means 3 in 10 people could not care less that your super website is treading water on page 2 at result number 12.
Aaron Wall and the larger SEO’s of this world argue daily with the likes of Matt Cutt’s of what the latest Google algorithm update includes and penalises against.
Matt Cutt’s is in a difficult position, being a large influence on anti spam throughout Google services and is the head of the webmaster team at Google. He and his team are responsible ultimately for changing Google ways of stopping spammers (yes they are evil and bombard our email in-box’s), black hat SEO techniques (the darker side of pushing your website to number 1 in search engines) and ensuring the best possible results are returned via Google’s search engines.
Matt is an active blogger and is often singled out for changes at Google because of his active online posts and interaction with people via his blog and twitter. In the economic downturn (credit crunch and recession) many people like to blame others, especially larger successful companies and the figure heads of the departments which effect your own business, hence the reason Matt Cutt’s does actually get a rough ride.
You must think that working at an industry leader (and pioneer is some respects) they like to enforce certain messages their own employees put across to the press, weather it is via official channels (like Youtube, google websmaster blog) or their own sites like Matt Cutt’s.
I think most of the arguments in recent times is over budget spent by smaller brands to compete with larger companies and how the natural or organic way (where you work hard on a long term plan to push your website up the search engine results page’s by content and relevant information) is not working as successfully as it should and used to. This also shows that Google’s latest update “Vince” has changed the way results are produced and how larger companies have more web presence than before.
This debate will continue for months and until the search engine optimisation community either changes their approach to the new change or Google bow down to pressure (which will not happen) it will be a never ending story.
Two final notes,
Firstly if Google did not have over 80% market search would SEO’s/webmaster’s question Google so much?
Secondly, what will make users change their search engine? If there becomes a better or relevant search engine comes out? Probably not as you would need to spend millions generating the right internet buzz and run a massive advertising campaign throughout printed media and television (Ask Ask.com how much their traffic increased a couple of years ago)
As an active white hat SEO – I would like to see my site come up in the top ten of most searches I blog about but unless you are wikipedia or youtube this will not happen for me, however with the ever changing goal posts this is not easy or simple for anyone to keep up and assist yourself or customers. I do understand the issues Google experience but have sympathy with the smaller companies and service providers who try and assist. Unless you are an SEO company who represents a large company there is never a level playing field with changes like Vince.
Let’s hope the next algo change is to put back some wrongs from the last one.
Danny Denhard
Betalabs
Tweet This :) 
Digg This Post 
Facebook
Related posts...
Comments
One Response to “Google putting more weight to brands??”
Leave a Reply
LinkedIn
If you want to see my LinkedIn profile, click on this button:
[...] What is slightly worrying is that Google are currently putting weight behind brands in more complex searches, this spells trouble for hard working web site owners, webmasters and SEO’s. Check out my post from yesterday on Google’s lean towards brands [...]