Google’s John Mueller was asked if “brand mentions” help with SEO and ranking. John Mueller explained in detail how Google doesn’t use brand mentions.
What are brand mentions?
A brand reference is one website’s mention of another website. There is an idea in the SEO community that when a website mentions another website’s domain name or URL, Google sees this and counts it the same as a link.
Brand mentions are also known as implicit links. Ten years ago, a Google patent stated, “implicit link” surfaced.
I haven’t had a solid review as to why the idea of ”brand references” has nothing to do with this patent, but I’ll provide an abbreviated version later in this article.
John Mueller Discusses Brand References
Do Brand Mentions Help Rankings?
The questioner wanted to know about brand mentions for ranking purposes. The questioner has good reason to ask it, because the idea of ”brand references” has never been definitively reviewed.
The person asked:
“Do unlinked brand mentions help my SEO ranking?”
Google does not use brand mentions
Google’s John Mueller responded that Google does not use “brand mentions” for link-related purposes.
Muller explained:
“From my point of view, I don’t think they’re used at all to understand PageRank or a website’s link graph.
Mere mentions can be hard to understand anyway. ”
The tricky part is interesting.
He didn’t elaborate on why it’s hard until later in the video when he says it’s hard to understand the subjective context of one website referring to another.
Mentioning your brand helps increase awareness
Mueller goes on to say that brand mentions can help spread the site’s reputation. This is for popularity.
Muller continued:
“But it can be something that makes people aware of your brand, and from that perspective, it can have some indirect impact in terms of how they search for your brand. And …Obviously, if they’re looking for your brand, you hope they can find you quickly and get to your website.
And if they like what they see there, they can go back and recommend it to others. ”
“Brand References” Are Problematic
Fifty-eight minutes later, another person brought up the topic again, asking how Google could handle spam sites that negatively mention brands.
The person said they can disavow links, but not “brand references.”
Mueller agreed, saying it’s one of the things that makes it difficult to use brand references for ranking purposes.
John Mueller explained:
“It’s really hard to understand the mostly subjective context of the mention.
Positive or negative mention?
Is it a sarcastic positive mention or a sarcastic negative mention? How do you know?
On top of all this, there are many spam sites out there, some just spinning content, others malicious about the content they create…
I don’t think all of these can be used in the same way as links.
…but I think it’s too confusing to use as a clear signal. ”
Origin of “Brand Reference”
The idea of ”brand mentions” has been around for over a decade.
There were no research papers or patents to back it up. A “brand mention” is literally an idea that someone came up with out of thin air.
However, in 2012, the idea of ”brand mentions” surfaced, and a patent appeared to back up the idea of brand mentions.
There’s a long story to this, so I’ll summarize.
There’s a 2012 patent that was misinterpreted in a few different ways by most people at the time, including myself, who didn’t read the entire patent from start to finish.
The patent itself is about ranking web pages.
The structure of most Google patents consists of introductory paragraphs that explain what the patent is about, and these paragraphs are followed by pages of detailed explanations.
The introductory paragraph explaining what it is says:
“Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs, for ranking search results.”
Few people read the first part of the patent.
Everyone focused on one paragraph in the middle of the patent (page 9 of 16).
In that paragraph there is a mention of something called “”.implicit link”
words “suggestive‘ is only mentioned four times throughout the patent, and all four times are in that one paragraph.
So when this patent was discovered, the SEO industry focused on that one paragraph as evidence of Google’s use of brand mentions.
To understand what an “implicit link” is, Google’s patent authors wrote “Reference query‘ is not a link, but like a link it is used for ranking purposes.
What is a reference query
A referral query is a search query that contains a reference to a URL or domain name.
The patent states:
“A specific resource group reference query can be a previously submitted search query that has been categorized as referring to a resource within a specific resource group.”
Elsewhere, the patent provides a more specific explanation:
“A query can be classified as referring to a specific resource if it contains terms that the system recognizes as referring to a specific resource.
…A search query that contains the term “example.com” can be categorized as referring to that homepage. ”
The patent abstract at the beginning of the document establishes which links to websites are independent, counts referral queries, and uses that information to determine the “modification factor” used to rank web pages. ” is about creating.
“…for each of a plurality of groups of resources, determine a respective count of reference queries; for each of a plurality of groups of resources, determine a respective group-specific modification factor, where each group-specific The change factor of is based on the number of independent links in the group and the number of referencing queries.
Overall patents are highly dependent on two very important factors: the number of independent inbound links and the number of referral queries. Phrase reference queries and reference queries are used 39 times in patents.
As mentioned above, referral queries are used for ranking purposes like links, but they are not links.
The patent states:
“An implicit link is a reference to the target resource…”
In this patent, when referring to implicit linking, it is clear that we are talking about reference queries. This means that people search using keywords and his website’s domain name, as explained above.
The idea of brand mentions is false
It’s how the patent got misunderstood that the whole idea of a “brand reference” became part of the SEO belief system.
But now we know the facts and why the “brand reference” is not real.
Moreover, John Mueller confirmed it.
“Brand mentions” are completely random things that someone in the SEO community just randomly came up with.
Quote
Ranking Search Results Patent
See John Mueller talking about “brand mentions” at the 44:10 minute mark. At the 58:12 minute mark his second part of Brand’s mention begins.
