For quite sometime now Google has been slowly incorporating a little something called trust factor into their search algorithm. Big trusted brands have been reaping the benefits mostly but that doesn’t mean that if you are a small business you shouldn’t be trying to increase your trust status in some sort of way. About a year ago Google had rolled out the Vince update which allowed a much stronger emphasis on larger brands in the search engines.

Matt Cutts from Google explains in a bit more detail in the video below:

The concept is easy, get Google to trust your website and your brand and you will be mush better off than if they don’t. Easier said than done right? In my opinion I think this is the direction the search industry will end up heading in with much greater force. When Google starts to trust your website other great things will allow happen. For example, your SEO efforts will probably have a much greater impact on your search rankings and your one way links pointing to your website are simply going to come naturally due to the volume of people and bloggers that will want to write about your business or brand.

Barry Schwartz, News Editor of Search Engine Land had this to say:

“This does seem to be using similar functionality to what Google launched in November, for their product search expansion, but here the brands are listed at the top of the results. The big brands are getting more exposure in the Google search results than possibly ever before.”

Brands in general are really starting to get some special treatment in the search engines. Another indicator why it is important to take a very tasteful approach to building your business online. Every marketing effort should be approached with a marketing hat on. Branding is going to play an even more important role as time goes on and the ability to have a company name that Google will “trust” will be very important for the long term growth of any business online.

Above I did a search for “Bicycles” and you can see there is this little section where Google will suggest a handful of large brands and manufacturers of Bicycles for the search user to chose from. This is important to realize because once your website starts to be an influencer and your authority in your industry increases as your website really starts to generate some power. This will not happen if you take a spammy approach to building your business online. We always emphasize that a website should always be treated like a business in order for Google to really look at you as an authority. Here is a prime example of larger brands reaping the rewards of proactive branding.