Do Google’s New US SERPS Place Heavy Emphasis on Branding?

It seems Google may now be returning well known brand names in top positions in it’s SERPS. A recent thread in the forums offered the following as an example:

Keyword: Quit Smoking
#1 – SmokeFree.gov
#2 – CDC.gov

Keyword: Laptop
#1 – Apple
#2 – Dell

Keyword: High Speed Internet
#1 – ATT
#2 – Comcast

Keyword: Car Audio
#1 – Crutchfield
#3 – Pioneer

Aaron Wall also offers us some example with his post Google’s New Search Engine Rankings Place Heavy Emphasis on Branding offering up some examples of brands that just started ranking.

Note these are for really valuable ‘generic’ terms – still plenty of opportunity for the little guy if you are optimising your page focusing on meeting the intent of a search engine user ie to buy a specific kind of something in your location, to learn something specific about something in your location etc.

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