Google Brand Suggestions: Bad for Business?

Let’s face it. It’s awfully difficult to get ranked for a general product on Google these days. Unless you are completely focused on the task and willing to work harder than your competitors, you are not going to have much of a chance of reaching those top 3 places for a general keyword phrase. In some markets, it’s almost impossible to get there without putting a monumental amount of hours in optimizing, grabbing links, and doing all kinds of things. Let’s say you want to show up #1 for the word “laptop” on Google. All I have to say to you is good luck. It’s going to take some work to get that done (not impossible to do though).

Now, it is going to even be harder for businesses to convert as well with the latest changes that Google has implemented on its search engine. In case you haven’t noticed, Google has introduced “brand suggestion” feature when searchers input a general keyword phrase. So if someone is looking for a laptop, they are going to be shown a selection of brands that they can choose from to narrow down their search results. Here is what Google had to say about this new feature:

Sometimes when searching for product information on Google, you may not know some of the brand names relevant to your particular search. For example, if you’re taking on a new river-rafting hobby, it’s quite likely you don’t have a clue about kayak manufacturers just yet. So, we wanted to make it easier for you to find the brands other people consider useful for popular product searches. So this week we launched a search refinement that calls out brand names related to your query in a single line above the rest of the results. Determined algorithmically, these highlighted brand names may help you find what you’re looking for faster.

I agree that this feature could help searchers find what they are looking for faster. But isn’t it a bit presumptuous to assume what brands searchers may be interested in finding out more about? Besides, the results do not seem to be perfect.

The above screenshot demonstrates what happens if you search for the term “netbook” on Google. Google is going to suggest Acer, ASUS, Dell, and HP brands. But it’s not going to show you other popular brands such as MSI or Lenovo. Apple does not have a netbook out either. So while this may be great for searchers, it could take business away for those who rank up high in the SERPs for the term “netbook.”

It is still not known how badly this will affect businesses that rely heavily on Google to make money. But it will have some effect. Branded terms give manufacturers a distinct advantage over small content websites that may be targeting those general one-word keyword phrases. It may not be a desirable move for independent content publishers. But, no content publisher should focus solely on one or two-word phrases. There is a reason long-tailing matters. But I would not put it past Google to make this feature available for those longer keyword phrases as well. Now that be an interesting challenge.