Brand popularity as a ranking factor

[EsCeOh]

Hi guys,
I was going nuts for 4 months, spending countless hours trying to find out why I lost some rankings in November 2019 from an algorithm update. Well, I think I may have finally found the reason. I lost 5-10 positions for over 20 keywords and 5 different domains. All of these domains are local businesses.

This is what I noticed. The sites beating me had their "brand name" googled more times than mine. It was a DIRECT correlation. I used Neil Patels Ubersugest to

Example: Keyword "shirt printing in Toronto"
Serp #1 - Brand searched 180 times
Serp #1 - Brand searched 150 times
Serp #9 - Brand searched 70 times (my site)

Anyone else noticing this?

 

[rafark]

No but sounds really interesting. Waiting for someone to do some tests.

 

[EsCeOh]

Try it out for yourself. Try using Ubersuggest to find out how many search hits for each of your competitors "company name". See if they get more hits than yourself.

 

[alternatesword]

If people used to search a brand means those brands are mentioned in more places compared to yours. What about their backlinks?

 

[EsCeOh]

In some cases, I had better backlinks, in other cases, they had better. The only correlation I found was how popular the brand was.
I forgot to mention, this is only for keywords where we were 'tied' for other more popular ranking factors (keyword density, anchor texts, titles, etc)

If people used to search a brand means those brands are mentioned in more places compared to yours. What about their backlinks?

 

[DuckingOutstanding]

I've been saying it for a couple years now and I'll continue saying it -

Brand mentions, also known as citations, ABSOLUTELY boost your ranking.

Google loves to give mealy-mouthed ambiguous answers as far as what is or is not a ranking Factor, and they will say that perhaps social signals ( which are a form of brand mention) themselves are not a NAMED ranking factor ( not specifically labeled as social signals anyway) , BRAND MENTIONS (which are the main component of social signals, the "signal" part of social signals) absolutely ARE a Factor...

And yes, if a brand name or phrase is typed into Google (or any search engine for that matter) more frequently, the SE will interpret that to mean that it is more likely to satisfy the end-user, and therefore rank it higher, that's nothing new.

That is actually exactly why there are people out there peddling Bots that do nothing but fake random device profiles and browsers, automatically go to Google, type in a specifically programmed keyword, scroll down and click on the link that it's programmed to scroll click to another page on the site scroll close the browser and start all over - those Bots are designed to manipulate that aspect of the ranking algorithm.

Also, it's no secret that Google loves brands

 

[Psychic Panda]

Brand name popularity is a direct ranking factor.Run brand awareness campaigns to get back on track to the related audience.

 

[tar729]

The popularity of the brand is indeed a ranking factor. The same factor works in social networks. Why are you surprised by this natural pattern? Google's algorithms copy ranking factors and their degree of influence from the natural social environment. And the more accurate this copying is, the more correct and adequate the serp will be

 

[Geasy]

As everyone mentioned here, brand searches have been a ranking factor for some time now. There was a case study from Neil Patel as well when he hired Instagram models to search on Google "who is neil patel" which increased his overall rankings.

You can use a tool like crowdsearch.me and do the same for your brand and see the results for yourself.

 

[Elon Snup]

I've noticed that beside brand search, brand citation (outside of links) is a factor.

 

[jonasnarvas]

Maybe we could ceeate a group to exchange bran searches?