Google Just Killed Your Online Business
Google has been making a lot of changes to the SERPs, and it seems they are pushing a lot of well known brands to the top of the listings.
One of their recent updates which I will coin as “Google Brand Links” can have a negative impact on online businesses.
Online traffic visitors will generally search for keywords (not brands) to find a product online, and online businesses rely heavily on these ‘unbranded keywords’.
If you were to search for ‘underwear‘ on Google, you’ll notice the first listing is freshpair.com. You’ll also notice that this company is not trying to go after branded keywords like “Victoria Secret”, “Joe Boxer”, “Hanes”, “Fruit of the Loom”, and “Calvin Klein” (even though they probably sell these brands)
Before, if I was looking for ‘underwear’ online, I would’ve probably been checking out freshpair.com before looking at the other sites on page 1. Now, Google has added these Google Brand Links to the top of the SERPs which will grab a person’s attention before they even see freshpair.com.
If I was a woman looking for underwear online, then I would probably click on the Victoria Secret link. If you click on the link, you’ll see that the Victoria Secret’s home page comes first which is no surprise. The problem is that Victoria Secret has an ECommerce site just like freshpair which means that fresh would more than likely lose the sale.
Now that’s just the first part…..it gets worse.
Let’s suppose you’re an ecommerce company that is selling a brand of an electric blanket that is not well known. Before the Google Brand update, you relied heavily on the organic visitors. Now that Google added the branded links, your chances of getting your product noticed has become very small. Not only have the big brands taken over the Shopping Results, they are now in the top under the Google Brand links .
That poor guy ElectricBlanket.net will probably lose a lot of traffic to Sunbeam, Beautyrest, Martex, Sealy, and LL Bean …and of course the Shopping Results. Sunbeam and other companies may not sell products directly, but when you click on their links…..guess who shows up? Amazon and JC Penney.
Now the online visitor will probably end up with one of these 2 companies, and electricblanket.net will never see them come to their site.
If you search for TV Wall Mount, you’ll notice that the brands are at the top again. If I were to buy a tv wall mount online, I doubt I will look at the brand as they’re probably all made in China by the same manufacturer. Since more than 50% of the online traffic click on the first link, they’ll probably end up click on the Sony Google Brand link.
Does Sony have it’s own Ecommerce store? Yep. I probably won’t buy their $899 TV wall mount, but since I’m already on that page….I’ll probably buy it at Amazon or hdtvsolutions.com. Amazon doesnt lose anything but standsandmounts.com which was part of the first query will lose a lot of visitors.
The only recommendation I can probably offer may not be the best possible solution since you may get slapped with a cease and desist letter.
Either way I’ll offer it and you can do it at your own risk.
If I were the TV Wall Mount company, I would try to offer the Sony brand and the other brands of wall mounts. I would also look into optimizing the Sony Wall Mount product page to rank on page 1 right next to the Sony website. Even if Google takes down the new brand links, you would still get the visitors who search products by brand name.
Update: Google posts about the Brand Refinements here
This is a very bad move. Devaluing organic listings even further isn’t going to do Google any favours in the long run.
It’s not been rolled out in the UK yet, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on this development. I don’t think your blog will be the last one pointing out that this is not a direction SEOs want to see Google go in.
Good post here Robert. This certainly seems to affect e-commerce sites that resell other brands quite a bit. Have you seen any examples of this sort of thing for services (rather than products)?
Do you see the same happening for services as well as products? This seems like a bone-head move on Google’s part. I don’t see how it makes for a better ‘user experience’ or generate any revenue for themselves.
Hey Jon & Don – Haven’t seen it on the services side… I noticed it checking my client rankings. It’ll probably roll out in the big services side soon. Big services like Roto Rooter for plumbing
I agree that this move is a poor direction for Google to take. Not only does it devalue smaller or unknown brands, it does not follow Google’s history of providing the most relevant search results. Is this a ploy for another income stream for Google?
I believe this move is a slap in the face for those websites with quality SEO work according to Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Is this a secret plot to help Bing, et al..? Probably not.
In the case of “electric blanket,” the page just looks cluttered and first reaction to it may very well be for the searcher to scroll down for some information as opposed to impression.
Time Square is interesting to walk through because of all visual media but it grows tiresome pretty quickly. Sensory overload.
In my opinion, adding more mini billboards from major retailers in a concentration is really similar to Times Square.
Does it matter to the searcher that wants to make a quick decision and will pull the trigger fast..?
Maybe not.
But, if the searcher is doing research and wants to get it right, the viewer may very well turn away from the clatter and clutter to get their bearings first.
Michael
How does Google decide what the “brands” are?
This is more bad news. It seems every update is worse. When will they learn to provide good results for the users is the key to keeping em. I see that Google is also adding more adwords links to the top forcing our results further down the page.
And the rich get richer…
The more time passes the less the little guy stand a chance
Why perform a search in the first place? It’s to find out what you DON’T know, not what is common knowledge. By favoring big brands in search results (G would say ‘trust score’), and now pushing these big brand links, G is delivering what we already know.
If I really wanted the biggest companies, I could simply search for “electric blanket companies” or “electric blanket brands”.
Seems like many of us agree….Google is going down a road that should not be traveled. Will this likely be something that they implement now, but after backlash change direction a bit like they did with real-time search? I surely hope so. Until then, all we can do is sit back and try to help our clients become HUGE household name brands….a task bigger than most of us are able to take out single handedly.
Interesting stuff. Could this approach be applied to services such as banking and finance?
This is a really surprising move from Google and i’m wondering what is they’re long term vision about SERP.
This is a very disappointing development. We have a hard enough time climbing the rankings, and now when get there or we’re close, they drop a load on us.
Wow. Seems like the web sites trying do things right – optimizing elements, providing content, employing good linking strategy – are screwed by the brands. Great.
Thanks for laying this out.
This makes the long tail even more important for the little guy as this feature is probably going to be implemented against the most importnant keywords at least initially.
All right guys. Let me just play devil’s advocate here. If I’m looking to buy some underwear online and I type in underwear and click search….I think I’m looking for Hanes or Fruit of the Loom. I’m not looking for somebody called freshpair. I never heard of freshpair. IMO freshpair should not be outranking Hanes and Fruit of the Loom and the other brands anyway. If freshpair is outranking the brand names, then something is wrong with the weighting of the different factors going into the search algo. Google should (and I think still does) want to provide the searcher with the answer the searcher is looking for.
All you SEO types feel free to tee off on me. I’m used to it.
Positioning brands like this is really damaging to the value of Googles SERPs in my opinion. People know brands, when they search they’re looking for deals, bargains and alternatives… Surely? These links should be bid for giving everyone a chance to place at the top, it’s not really ethical otherwise in my opinion.
Bad, bad move imo. Pushing brands on top of the SERPs is not fair but then again, Google has its own agenda and they are a company with their own interests in mind. If they choose to make a monopoly of brands out of their search engine, they do it at their own risk. Maybe it’s time Bing stepped in a little bit more aggressively?
Thanks for this amazing post. I noticed also this tendency when using the Google SERP, there were lots of amazon results also. Amazon is also preferred. But in my opinion Google is also trying to make a database with products relying on the sales. So if I search for “bosch dishwasher” after the first result which is related to main bosch brand it will shown the google results from shopping. I think it will not really affect the small business sites owners because if the guy just wants information about the product the more credible site is the site of the brand. If the guy chooses or not to buy from there this is another story. If he wants reviews he will go to shopping and reviews sites to acquire advices from people who bought the product. So…I think that the process of buying it will be longer but the guy will choose the site from where he can get reviews and advices.
It;s disappointing but all we can do is stick to the principles of good SEO and wait for the next change to come in. Google will change its formula again and again. Eventually if customers stop getting what they want they will try another search engine.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Sad move from google, really does devalue seo =[
If you do a search for PDA you get brand links for Palm, HP, Blackberry, Sony and the Texas Education Agency. So it clearly isn’t a hand selected result. This doesn’t devalue seo it just means you have to figure out how Google is selecting the brand links.
Ranking for brand terms is fine. That’s like Future Shop advertising Sony products – no one’s going to think Future Shop = Sony. No TM problems in my humble opinion.
This is a very good point of view. This is very bad for website owners but sorta good for website publishers.
There is less competition on the long tail keywords so you can optimize for those and out rank the big boys.
This is going to be really make it tough to compete in some markets. But I have found Bing like this also they tend to not notice Google type seo tricks.
I have just started learning to apply PPC and they tell me Google is only 20% of the internet they market to. I guess it has always just been trying to keep up with Google the thing I have found is Google is 100% cash driven business. You follow the cash and you can understand Google.
I don’t think this change is in line with Google’s attempt to provide the best search results to their users. I initially noticed they posted the Brand Links at the bottom of the page which IMO is a better position for this information.
If I make a website for a “Brand”, and when someone Googles the “product name” that they produce… I think it would be a win that a list of brands is available before online stores selling numerous other products and competing brands. People have a tendency to meander, as we all know, on the web.
There is a massive battle going on in the Brand “vs” retailer world. Things used to be a bit more orderly. Over the years Brands have had to deal with arrogant buyers, funky distributors, and poorly trained retail employees that they had no control over. This old school phenomena led to massive fluctuations in sales and orders along with unreasonable demands put upon companies that spent massive amounts of money developing manufacturing and marketing products. Apple stores, Quicksilver stores, Billabong… The llst goes on and on Brand to buyer is the new world.
Google used to hone in on searches, over the years (kudos SEOers) it has become a myriad of super ranked funky products, misleading links diverting the searcher from their appointed goal. If Google can be egalitarian in its listing of “brands” that is the question. I am sure SEO geniuses will figure out how to Brand Up for clients in no time.
Same thing with Bing but they take it one step further. It’s natural progression for corporations to keep moving up the money tree taking more money away from the small guys in favor of the big guys that pay more.
End result is customers have a poorer experience with search and might look elsewhere for their results.
Just wait until G starts showing local stores in your listings, then the big brands… the little guys have no chance.
Lesson: Don’t count on Google or search engines for your business model.
The obvious question that popped into my mind first when I read the first part of the article and then rapidly skipped down to the comment section was “Is Robert a woman shopping for underwear online?”
Obviously, all the rest is just fleeting in importance, but if we can get to the bottom so to say of this question then I suspect all else will reveal itself in time.
Is this a secret plot to help Bing, et al..? Probably not.
In the case of “electric blanket,” the page just looks cluttered and first reaction to it may very well be for the searcher to scroll down for some information as opposed to impression.
Time Square is interesting to walk through because of all visual media but it grows tiresome pretty quickly. Sensory overload.
In my opinion, adding more mini billboards from major retailers in a concentration is really similar to Times Square.
Does it matter to the searcher that wants to make a quick decision and will pull the trigger fast..?
Maybe not.
But, if the searcher is doing research and wants to get it right, the viewer may very well turn away from the clatter and clutter to get their bearings first.
Michael