• Brand strength as key predictor of success in Google’s search rankings – at expense of topically focused sites
• How SEOs can measure brand / What is means for small or new sites
• Implications of Google’s Helpful Content Updates (HCU) being integrated into Core Updates

Based on nearly 2 million domains across Google’s so-called “Helpful Content Updates”, Tom notices a measurable pattern – that the biggest predictor of whether sites will succeed or fail is not their content, but their brands. Google has made no secret of their ambition to prioritise brands in search, and doing so solves many of their current problems. This is all at the expense, ironically, of many topically focused sites which produce exactly the sort of content Google tells SEOs they need. But how can SEOs measure brand? If you are a small or new site, where does this leave you? And does the story change now that HCU is rolled into Core Updates?