randle - 1:33 am on Apr 27, 2012 (gmt 0)

As more and more websites come onto the web, the single best way to determine quality is brand.

The brand thing has been building for some time now in the niches we patrol, its gone from around 20% brands on the first page to around 70% ever since Mr. Schmidt pontificated his feelings on that subject.

It looks even stronger now but whether thats cause or effect I just dont know. Certainly some non brand guys who were skilled in the arts shall we say took a hit, but the big brands held steady. What seems to have moved in are independent company sites that carry and actually sell the brands, plus a bunch of older sites I had not seen around in a while. I'm not ready to jump on the "EMD" bandwagon totally but there are some that popped up, a few that dont even have any real content on them.

Well theres always change in this business, just sometimes its a lot bigger than others. If someone had told me 10 years ago that one day in the future the Google results would be dominated by big brands, I would have thought they were crazy, and did not have a real grasp, or insight into the nature of Google. Now thats real change.