Brand Promotion

I guess everyone knows about Aaron’s article on Google pushing brands in their ranking algo. Aaron basically showed search results were airlines that didn’t rank for airline tickets began ranking right after Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) had made comments like.

The internet is fast becoming a “cesspool” where false information thrives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday.

Speaking with an audience of magazine executives visiting the Google campus here as part of their annual industry conference, he said their brands were increasingly important signals that content can be trusted.

“Brands are the solution, not the problem,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”

“Brand affinity is clearly hard wired,” he said. “It is so fundamental to human existence that it’s not going away. It must have a genetic component.”

Aaron went on to show how well recognized diet programs began ranking for diets and the list goes on and on.

A lot of people in the SEO industry laughed it off as nothing more than Aaron trying to get people to link to him. But then Matt Cutts came out and said yes, it is true.

The big question is how is the algo determining what is and what is not a brand?