Robert_Charlton - 4:09 am on Oct 13, 2010 (gmt 0)

At least in our industry it'll drive the manufactures nuts as they get calls from end users

Bingo. ;)

I don't think Google wants to be this simplistic, and I have seen evidence that Google is using measurements of, say, searcher satisfaction for what site they return for what query. It's not just brand name co-occurrence.

There are increasingly a number of searches I've done where sites that I've wanted to find first have been returned instead of manufacturers' sites. Let's say these are awesome review sites, so good that's where everybody looks first for product information... and, in comparison, the manufacturers' site are just fluff brochureware.

That said, when you search for [brandname widgets], rather than [brandname modelnamewidget], manufacturers' sites are usually returned first, since Google is assuming, rightly so, that a manufacturer will have the best list.

But I will bet that if, over time, a manufacturer doesn't have the best product list, Google will start sending searchers elsewhere.