This is an interesting strategy by Google and not one I’m too convinced about.  Promoting well made web sites, with good content and lots of other relevant sites linking to it has been the staple of Google’s success and I’m not sure the public necessarily want to find just the high street stores when they’re searching on Google (especially ones with poor websites, and they do exist!).  Whether this is right or not remains to be seen, I’m sure Google have done a lot of research before making this move but instinct tells that their USP may be devalued a little here.

But the question that’s really on everyone’s lips is how do you become a brand, in the eyes of Google (well it’s on my lips).  The ever helpful Google doesn’t like to think of the word “brand” but rather of “trust” and “authority” (see the Matt Cutts video on youtube), so how do you become one of those in the eyes of Google?  Well on analysing some of the big movers it seems, rather obviously, that it’s a lot to do with popularity and traffic (using the likes of Alexa).  I’m wondering whether the browsing information coming back from the Google Toolbar is of a high enough quality to start basing more weighted SERP decisions on.

Well big brands have clearly moved up the SERPs and whilst it’s certainly not the end of the road for SEO on small business websites this change has made it harder.  We’ll just have to re double our efforts and hope Google slowly reduce the weighting they give to brands.