The New "Brand" Algorithm of Google

There are all sorts of speculation about the signals Google using to define a site as being a brand will deserve a boost in SERPs. It seems overnight many big brands came up to the first page on Google without any SEO tweaks done to their website. Last month Aaron Wall from SEOBook posted his opinion about the change in the algorithm. The few examples which he has referred are about American Airlines, Delta and North West Airlines have come to the first page of Google for the search keyword ‘airlines tickets’ which was not the case earlier. Even Hallmark.com recently started ranking on first page for the keyword ‘gifts’.

If Aaron is correct then - Is Google giving more credit to the brands? Is it considering that only big brands have original and quality content? Do people look only for brands when they want to search? If I wanted to search for a website of certain brand, I would rather type the brand name as the keyword in Google and directly go to the website. Instead of ‘airlines tickets’, I would rather type ‘Delta airlines’ or American airlines’ and go to their website. I will not rather search for just 'airlines tickets' and check for Delta.

In India SearchMasters 2009 which happened recently in Bangalore, India, Adam Lasnik did mentioned in his Q&A session that, in the title tag, it is always good to use the Company’s name and location where it offers the products and services to be mentioned. I am wondering if he was pointing it to this algorithm change. If we add the company or brand name to the title tag are we not wasting the main real estate here? Adam Lasnik says no. Google considers stuffing of keywords in title tags as spamming. I believe if the brand is well known then it makes a lot of sense to put your brand in the page title or meta description tag. It might help to get clicks and even when it does not at least it helps aid awareness. On top of that, if it builds good CTR then it will help in personalized search.

Another sad news and set-back I see for small players is that they have to build their brand image to beat these brand company’s websites in Google’s result pages. The fact is that it’s just plain hard to define the strength of a local brand using an algorithm or a robot visit.

Few tips to minimize the effect of this change in the algorithm (these are just my guesses now and I have never experimented them). Follow them at your own risks.

1. Frame your title tag with your company’s name and in short provide the product or service you are offering. If possible mention the local area as well. Example: Company Name: Your product/service description and location. Something like - Northwest Airlines - Airline Tickets, Plane Tickets & Airfare.
2. Have a short and meaning full description which clearly summarizes the page content/product/service which you have on that page. If description tag is missing and/or is not relevant to the content that is available on that page, Google will take the description for your website which is on DMOZ.org (if at all your website is listed there).
3. Never use the same title and description tag for all the pages of your website - as usual.
4. Focus on long-tail keywords as this is more advantageous now. eMarketers.com research showed that more and more people are using long-tail and this will increase in coming months.
5. Concentrate on local search optimization.

These are just the two cents. And it is too early to suggest any solutions about this change. I am just trying to guess the relationship between what Adam Lasnik talked during the session and this algorithm change.

Latest Important Update: Matt Cutts of Google made a video talking specifically about this change. Matt said, they made a "change" but he wouldn't call it an "update", but rather a "minor change." In fact, in Google they call it the Vince's change. In short, he said this impacts a relatively small number of queries, not the long tail ones and it is more about "trust," the "quality" of the page, the page's "PageRank" and "value" then about brands.

One example he gives at 2m12s) is that if you type in eclipse into Google, the first result is not from Mitsubishi. So he says it is not "brand" focused but more about trust.