Brand Names Sites Not in Google Results

[webmama]

I have confirmed that a number of brand name sites are no longer showing up in their traditional #1 positions. The new results do not appear consistently so it must be part of a new algorithm. This is serious stuff as it is costing Google Advertising client's money as people click on the brand name's ads since they are not seeing the expected organic result. Good for Google, bad for the advertiser. The clients are yelling loudly but we need more ammunition for the battle. Anyone?

[airtravelcenter]

Registered business name Air Travel Center displays airtravelcenter.com #1 at every engine on earth except only Google. In our case though, it is other advertisers paying the adwords bill. See below:

Air Travel Center
Find deals for Air Travel Center.
Search Airfare Bargains and Save!
SideStep.com

Air Travel Center Rates
Compare Hotels at Top Travel Sites
Air Travel Center Bargains & Deals
www.NexTag.com/Hotels&Reviews

Air Travel Center
Discount Travel Information
2 Plane Tickets & Hotel Stay $97
www.ConsumerTravel.org

Yes, we did ask GOOG and the advertisers to refrain from using our business name in their advertising. Another registered Air Travel Center in California took their website offline and no longer cares much.

I wonder if Google believes that when a person searches for Air Travel Center, they are actually looking for Patient Travel? I asked them but did not receive a response. Maybe the advertisers above are paying enough for Google to devalue relevance of serps?

[webmama]

I was hoping this discussion would be about 'organic' listings. Advertising is probably covered elsewhere but I do feel your pain.

[Chris_D]

Hey Barb,

Time to come to Sydney.

OK - Just email me the issues. Seriously.

No promises - lah de dah - etc - end of financial/ tax year here on June 30th - so most clients want everything done yesterday/ last month...

[Chris Boggs]

Hi Barbara... just found this thread since it's on Barry's hit list for SER. I did a quick check and the Pharma brands I checked all still appeared #1 organically, each of them below their Paid Ads (many of them also topped by Co-op related refinements, but that's another story)

I'll keep an eye out for others to help fill your clip...

[shor]

I have confirmed that a number of brand name sites are no longer showing up in their traditional #1 positions.

Hi webmama, can you clarify the following?

Any specific industry?
What do you mean traditional #1 position? No longer #1 for their strictly branded keyword (eg. "Hewlett Packard") or #1 for brand name permutations/misspellings ("Hewlet Packard") or "brand + product" ("HP Printer") type keywords?
How unique are the branded terms?
Brand awareness and brand strength of the companies?

The market leaders in my niche (all types of classifieds) continue to rank well for their branded keywords.

[webmama]

As of today I can not find the instances of brand names losing their positions. I expect what I was seeing was a test that moved sites like apartments.com and shoes.com out of their #1 position for their domain names. That may have been on purpose, not sure. I can say that with one client the PPC cost skyrocketed when their site stopped showing up #1 in organic. Interesting....

[shor]

Originally Posted by webmama

As of today I can not find the instances of brand names losing their positions. I expect what I was seeing was a test that moved sites like apartments.com and shoes.com out of their #1 position for their domain names. That may have been on purpose, not sure. I can say that with one client the PPC cost skyrocketed when their site stopped showing up #1 in organic. Interesting....

Hehe webmama! I actually went to your client list page and threw all the brand terms of your clients into Google to see if any were not first but they were all sitting pretty @ #1

[The Founder]

Webmama,

Google was going though what I would consider one of the larger updates I have seen in a long time. Your Clients rankings will stablize in a few weeks at most, if not already.

[David Wallace]

I haven't seen any brand names slipping for our clients. We have however beat out some other brands however for some of our e-commerce clients. Kind of neat when the e-commerce site of our clients ranks better then the brand they are selling for the brand name.

This is due to the fact that there are still a lot of big brands that do not have their sites optimized to position well in the organic SERPs. So a well optimized e-commerce site with quality content (lots of it) and quality inbound links can beat them out.