Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, “Brands are the solution, not the problem”.

Have you ever thought of SEO and branding as inter-related terms? This is important because Google has changed its algorithm for ranking the websites and has now come up with a novel concept, wherein the ranking will be directly proportional to the brand name. Better the brand name, higher will be the ranking.

However, some marketers are of the opinion that they are related, as in online arena, branding of a website could be compared against its visibility over internet. If a website has a good branding label that simply means that the website has been posted on thousands of other websites and people are talking about that website over social media platforms and their blogs. So, at the end what website gets are more back links and more visitors!

But this is possible only when the website has something unique to offer which adds quality. So, the question is, does every website offer it? Even if the answer is yes, then how will Google decide who is the better brand amongst them? Will it not pose danger to the start-ups who are trying their best to make a name in their targeted niche? It will definitely be a virulent environment for small businesses which don’t have deep pockets to compete with the biggies in the same field and will eventually be expunged from the online business. It is because zero visibility on Google is synonymous to zero visibility online, at least for the small businesses.

Since many years Google is trying to remove and filter out the spam pages from its index and the latest one in the league was by specifying the canonicals. However, this new move has reportedly sent the negative vibrations in the search engine industry. Although Google is saying that it will help them to further clear out the cesspool in the search engine results page, it is a matter of concern for many as to how will it be implemented as the bitter memories are still afresh in the minds of webmasters whose sites were dropped to 6 from 1 in December 2007.

Seobook in one of its article has said, “The January 18th Google Update Was Bigger Than Florida, but Few People Noticed it”. Many brands / manufacturers rose from nowhere to ranking at the top of the search results. Most affected industries as for now by this new algorithm change are:

· Airlines

· Auto Insurance

· Boot brands

· Websites running Diet programs

· Health insurance

· Online education provider

· Watch brands

The websites or rather brands in the above stated industries are not the brands that are ranking, but the brands that just started ranking who were till now in the oblivion. These are not the only industries that are affected but there are many affected by the new change. However, the trend is clear – Google is promoting brands for big money core category keywords.

But there are still many questions which lie unanswered:

1. How does Google decide whether a company is a brand to reckon with?

2. Even if Google somehow manages to identify the brand, how can it be so sure that the tagged brand satiates the searchers thirst?

3. What about the start-ups or small businesses who are trying to make a name in the online business or use it to climb up to the pinnacle of success?

4. Last and most importantly, does it mean an end to SEO?

Surely there are many other questions and confusions in the minds of  people requiring clarifications, but only time will unfold the answers.