In early 2009 Google started giving more weight to brands when it came to search engine results. Quite naturally, a lot of people predicted doom for organic search results. Fortunately, any damage to unique, high-quality non-”brand” content appears to be minimal so far. The ones who have suffered have mostly been those with thin affiliate sites – sites that have very little actual content but push affiliate programs.
Google’s goal in doing this was to keep the first SERP from being dominated by low-content sites. It is easy to see how some people would fear that SEO suddenly wouldn’t matter anymore, if you were going to search on, say, boots and have a first results page dominated by Uggs, Kenneth Cole, Kate Spade, and Tod’s. This wouldn’t do you much good if you wanted work boots.
But what seems to have happened is that there is more of an eclectic mix on the first SERP with searches on broad keywords, like health insurance. You can see in the three screen shots that the first results page has a mix of sponsored sites, big brands, informational pages, news results, and book results. The sky hasn’t fallen yet, but those who run hundreds of thin affiliate sites may want to be looking over their shoulders.
