Matt Cutts has spoken about what the change (not update, actually called “Vince”) on the Google search engine. The main points to take away imho:
“”Inside of Google, at least inside the search ranking team, we don’t really think about brands. We think about words like ‘trust’ ‘authority’ ‘reputation’ ‘PageRank’ ‘high quality’.”
“First off, YES, Google has made a change in our rankings, it’s one of over 3-400 we make very year. So, I wouldn’t call it an ‘update’, I would call it a simple change.”
“It doesn’t affect a vast majority of queries, it’s more likely, and most people haven’t noticed it. I mean Aaron talked about it and I think even before that people at WebMasterWorld were talking about it. But it affects a relatively small number of queries, it’s not like it affects a ton of long-tail queries or anything like that.”
You can read a transcript of it and see Matt’s speech about for youself at David Harry’s online residence
. So? Much ado about nothing? I suspect there is no such thing as a “New brand algo”.
The issue I see with this kind of update is that google must have some way of determining ‘trust’ that involves brand names. I.e., it’s an editorial decision to favor big established companies.
It’s very similar to the issue of net neutrality.
If you favor the big guys, the smaller guys who actually have better products are effectively being throttled.
This would not be an issue if we had a healthier search ecosystem with multiple competing search technologies. Engines that imposed this kind of editorial control would be used less. However since google has a monopoly on search, and since users are not informed that google is making value judgements about trust from brand names, it’s a disservice to the searcher and SERPs alike.
IMO
@ticketmaster:
“Engines that imposed this kind of editorial control would be used less.”
That is not really what you are thinking, is it? Because it would be daydreaming.
“[...] and since users are not informed that google is making value judgements about trust from brand names, it’s a disservice to the searcher and SERPs alike.”
Even if they would know, they would use Google, just because of a combination of marketing and a lack of knowledge.
My optimistic guess is that maybe 1 in a 1000 Google users has ever thought about how this search engine works, not to mention of really getting into it.
The rest is simply “consuming” results. Thats mainly building the base for Google’s power.
My take on this is that the SEOs who are panicking about this change are those who expect their, or their clients’, sites to rank for very broad keywords.
Examples I’ve seen thrown around of terms which have been impacted by this change include “boots”, “diets”, “watches” and “airlines”. These terms are so general that any decent SE should be returning general results.
If I search google.co.uk for “airlines” I expect to see sites like British Airways, Virgin and Monarch, I also expect to see informational sites, like Wikipedia entries on the history or airlines, and perhaps related news articles and research papers. I don’t expect to see many ticket brokers, because I didn’t search for “airline tickets” and there’s no indication to the SE that that is what I wanted information on.
Equally if I search for “boots” I could be looking for information on the UK pharmacist chain, footwear, or 1930′s actress Boots Mallory. The SE has to provide a best-guess spread based on that broad term, and with only 10 results on the page the sites that make those positions will have huge trust, authority and PR (much of which is, yes, an indirect result of massive brand recognition).
General search queries should, and in the case of Google, do return general results. SE’s have to cater to the everyman searcher, and I believe Google’s “Vince” change is responding to that nicely.
Joey – the hypothetical (daydreaming) scenario was one in which google does not exert brand-based monopoly over search.
Most people think ‘google’ as the first and only place to go to search.
I don’t think google would get away with much of the subjective editorializing they impose. If there were a more diverse ecosystem of competing search engines, I do think that many would shy away from engines that always promoted big brands as the ‘most trustworthy’ results. If I kept getting ticketmaster or IBM or GM I’d use other engines that were more neutral in determining relevancy. Trust is subjective.