Google adds brands to search results

Saturday 01 May 2010 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter

Google is testing a search results box that places top brands above regular results for product-related searches.

This brand information - which is neither an ad nor a normal search result - was first spotted by the Internet marketing news website, Search Engine Land. Industry pundits began foraging into Google's experimentation and found these special brand results for queries including 'digital cameras', 'notebook PCs', 'cars', 'mobile phones', 'label printers' and even 'fishing rod'.

Each time, the first result below the ads that head up the search results page contained the text 'Brands for' followed by the search subject (eg 'Brands for digital cameras') and then five big brands with hyperlinks to other search results pages that combined the original search and the brand in question:

It seems that global brands are getting the best exposure in Google search results than they have ever had. So far, Google has not given an informative response to this development work, saying only:

"As before, on questions about testing and this design, this is just a test and at this point we don't have more to share. But, please do stay tuned. We'll be sure to keep you in the loop about any new developments."

Google is obviously developing its product search strategy, although the detail is not yet clear. This move comes in the wake of a deal that makes it easier for manufacturing and retail companies to feed users' reviews into Google product pages. With product-related searches being a big money-spinner in terms of ad revenue, changes here may create new opportunities for Google.

One thing is for sure: it's all good news for big brand owners. Only a year ago, Aaron Wall, CEO of SEO Book, demonstrated the trend for websites of famous brands to perform much more strongly in search results than in the past. Google's response at the time was that this was not related to the brand per se, but rather to 'trust' metrics it had introduced. Around the same time, Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, reiterated his view of the web as a 'sewer' where brands represent quality - which doesn't say much for the millions of Google AdWords customers that are not recognisable brands!

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