signor_john - 4:06 am on Feb 24, 2009 (gmt 0)

I can only say that this is a direction I'm sure Google has been considering for quite a while. They are not running a ranking contest, after all, but a service for their end users. If the end users seem happier with branded results it makes sense to me that they would look harder at this area.

Sounds reasonable to me, at least for results where one might expect to see a brand name. As a user, I'm always annoyed when I'm looking up "widgetco widget" or "hotel flibflab" and get a dealer page or a booking page at an affiliate site instead of widgetco.com or hotelflibflab.com. On the other hand, if I were searching for "shoes," I wouldn't expect to see Nike in the #1 spot. I'd expect, or at least hope, to see something like a Wikipedia article about shoes or maybe the International Footwear Council's home page.