Google Caffiene – Brand Focussed, A Step Too Far?
One of Google’s latest updates has been tentatively named “Caffiene”. One of the features that people are talking about is more focus on brand names. Which kinda makes sense. For example, if you search for coca-cola or facebook, chances are you want their official site. There’s discussion that Google’s Brand Focus has already been added. So – for the purposes of this excercise – lets assume it has. Now is it a good thing?
The Good
Well, in one way, yes it’s very good. I generally want the brand’s website first to come top of Google results. Makes sense. If you searched for Facebook, would you want to see Facebook at top? Or some website that is SEO’ed better than Facebook?
The Bad
One problem I can see with this is brands having a similar name to something very similar. For example, if you search Google UK for “Everest”, would you want the window company? The benchmarking tools for Windows? Or the mountain? Google has it’s opinion:-
I know which one I’d prefer to be #1. But that’s only one small thing. Overall I think it’s a good thing – it makes the results more suited to good marketable websites, rather than good SEO’ers. Something I much prefer.
Your thoughts?
Tags: caffiene, google, SEO | Comments: 2 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
I think this is generally a good thing and you’re right that most of the time when I search for a specific brand i’m looking for the official website.
It should also help keep the less competent Google user keep clear of bad neighbourhoods, virus ridden sites etc but it will only be a matter of time before the spammers work out how to get round it.
at last a relief for the brand owners