Yesterday Aaron Wall made a HUGE announcement on his site, SeoBook.com, about the most recent Google algorithm update that just occurred this month. I rarely talk about SEO related topics on my blog but after reading Aaron’s post I had to say something.

In his post, Google’s New Search Engine Rankings Place Heavy Emphasis on Branding, Aaron outlines and gives examples of how “Google is promoting brands for big money core category keywords”. Yes, Google is now giving large corporate branded sites a helping hand in ranking for large keywords, WTF mate? But how could I be so sure Aaron is right this new update (which I’m officially calling the “Commi Update” btw) because I believe I noticed some of these preliminary changes coming about a year (maybe year and a half) ago.

As I was working in a very competitive space with large traffic keywords I noticed that a brand new website popped up for a few of these large keyterms. This website was less than a few months old, had only a handful of low quality backlinks and horrible onpage optimization. At first I figured, they were just spamming and would be gone in a few days. Well, that didn’t happen and this website continued to crawl up the first page for these terms.

As I sat back and continued to watch their backlinks closely, it started to boggle my mind as to how this website could be ranking so well and their links weren’t moving. About a month later (if even that) another website, this one a large banks site, came out of nowhere and started ranking on the first page. This second website’s onpage optimization was okay and they had decent backlinks but not nearly as good of links as a lot of the other sites on the first page for these keyterms.  As I continued to watch both of these websites SEO tactics carefully I noticed not much improvement but continued increases in their ranks. At this point I didn’t know what to think until I was home watching TV a few days later and noticed that these two companies TV commercials were continuously playing promoting product in the space I was in!

After thinking it all over I thought maybe Google is somehow incorporating these companies with aggressive TV advertisements into their search results for the products these companies are advertising? I remember sitting in my bosses office the next day brining up this ridiculous idea but we discussed it and came to the different conclusion that maybe these commercials were scoring a lot of good links to these websites because of their commercials and we just didn’t see these links pop up yet. Well I now do not believe that was the case as I think this was part of the initial testing Google was doing to this into their algorithm.

Here’s why:

A few days ago I checked the old space I was in (before reading Aaron’s post obviously) and noticed a major shift in rankings had occurred for these large terms. I noticed it was mostly large branded corporate bank sites and of the results both of these mentioned websites above had rankings #2 and #8 now and both sites backlinks had dropped since I last checked. The #8 site actually still has zero PR, still has horrible onpage and still has crap for links and get this, has a pop up on their website stating that they no longer offer this product! So how could this site still be ranking with all the above? My theory is that their TV branding efforts previously helped them create a brand name for this product in Googles mind.

So why would Google do this?

First off, Google seems to hate affiliate marketers (and with this update mom and pop shops) and I believe this could be a way for them to stomp these sites out. But my theory, which may sound far fetched, is a little more detailed.

Google is pushing hard to sell their TV & Online Radio Ad Platform.

When you’re a company trying to create a large brand for yourself what’s the most effective marketing channel to do this in? My answer and I’m sure lots of others would be television advertising. And guess who’s offering TV advertising? GOOGLE!

My second answer would be radio advertising which I find humorous cause guess who’s now offering online audio ads through Pandora, Slacker and other online music channels pitching it as a great way to promote branding? Well if you’ve spoken with your Adwords rep lately you’d know its, Ga-Ga-GOOGLE!

So here’s my thought. Google has failed in the print advertising space and they’ve got the PPC  and site ads with their affiliate channel/Adsense on lockdown so where can they expand next? Pump up their online radio and TV advertising channels! And how can they promote this and get everyone to use these marketing channels? By using branding as an emphasis on search engine rankings! YAY…NOT!

Not every industry has seen the effects of this change yet, as I’m sure Google would not want to unleash this in all industries because of the backlash it might cause, but I’m sure everyone will notice it more and more soon. I would recommend reading Aaron’s post (link above) and read some of the great comments people have left.

I know it’s still new but I personally don’t think this is a good update for Google. If my results only serve me the big brands when looking for product through Google, why would I need to use Google? I mean, I know who the major airlines are and I know these greedy bastards aren’t going to give me the best deals.

Image by:  Skorp