Have you taken a look at the results in Google’s “Searches related to:” box recently? I’ve noticed that larger numbers of these have been appearing and that they had been improving. It used to be a good thing to look at during keyword research to see what Google thought people might be typing.
However, they have changed it so that it has started to show increasing numbers of brand names. Have a look at the search refinements below:
A great instance of Google bias, even if they are technically related. Big brands win here big time. If I was a SEO for those companies I’d be cheering I suppose, but many SEOs work to help the “little guy” get visibility. It has always been one of the great things about the internet that it is a much more level playing field.
And there are literally thousands of instances of this promotion, here’s a few that I found earlier.
- Search for [career] get suggested Learn Direct
- Search for [contemporary furniture] get Habitat
- Search for [garden furniture] get Homebase and Focus
- Search for [fast car] get Max Power
- Search for [seo] get SEO Elite
- Search for [mortgage] get Halifax, Abbey, Nationwide and Northern Rock
Just astonishing that Google promotes these brands in this way, especially if they don’t appear organically on the first page for these terms (many don’t).
Like everything else at Google, these are no doubt algorithmically generated, but they are bad news for small and medium sized businesses who are trying to get visibility without multi-million pound marketing budgets for brand awareness. And no doubt Google tracks the clickthroughs on these terms, so that the fact they appear means they get clicked on, and this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
I usually like Google’s relevancy improvements, but I’m not keen on this one, even from a user perspective because it is restricting choice not improving it.
