Distilled's Tom Critchlow recently gave a presentation on SEO Ranking Factors at Digital East. One of the key points he made is how brand links could potentially be affected by search volume. The higher the search volume for your brand, the more likely you are to appear in the brand links.

What is a Brand Link?

In May of 2010, Google announced via their blog that they had made brand refinements for product information in Google. Google's intent was to help inform users who are looking for information about a product, but are also unfamiliar with the brands that are associated with that product. The purpose of the brand links is to make it easier for users to find "popular" brands. According to their post, these "popular" brands are determined algorithmically.

For some head terms, these brand links would appear right below the paid search ads. These are especially influential for companies in the e-commerce space because it always helps to be associated as a "popular" brand with any product. 

Many of the brand links pertain to articles of clothing, but they can also pertain to accessories (handbags).

It can even include equipment, such as bikes.

Or something as simple as office supplies, like pencils.

It's uncertain which factors are involved in identifying "popular" brands for head terms. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that each brand's corporate website and how optimized they are for keywords is not enough to result in a brand link. This is because many of the websites that do have brand links actually do not employ SEO best practices, such as using targeted keywords on the website.

For instance, I took a look at American Eagle to evaluate how optimized their site is for the head term "jackets", since they appear in Google's brand links for this term. Using SEOmoz's on-page report card tool, it was determined that American Eagle actually has an F grade for "jackets" optimization.

For the head term "jackets", American Eagle isn't even ranked in the first 3 pages of the SERPs. Thus, what are some possible reasons why American Eagle would receive a brand link for "jackets"?

Keyword Search Volume and Its Impact on Brand Links

One possible reason is due to increased search volume for the brand "American Eagle" in conjunction with the keyword "jacket". This was identified using Google's Insights for Search, which provides information about search volume trends. Thus, it is possible that Google is taking notice of which head terms are being associated with which brands, particularly in search queries. The rising searches below appear to be very similar to the type of brands that have brand links for the head term "jackets" (Hollister and Gap along with American Eagle).

This type of scenario also applies for other head terms, such as "sneakers".

Below is a breakdown of the totals for all the brand links + the keyword sneakers using the Google Insights for Search tool. According to Google, the totals numbers represent the number of searches conducted for a relative term compared to the number of searches on Google overtime. There were a significant number of searches for many of the brands as shown below.

Other Potential Factors

Upon further investigation, such as observing the rising search trends, there is evidence indicating that search volume is not the only factor influencing brand links. If that was the case, then "Adidas" sneakers should also have a brand link.

Although, it's not entirely clear why "Adidas" was left out of the brand links, a couple of hypotheses can be construed. For example, perhaps Google is taking into account the number of news mentions for a brand or even the number of social media mentions.

I tested out some examples of news mentions. In this case, Adidas sneakers received 96 Google News mentions.

On the other hand, New Balance sneakers, which has a brand link, received about 202 news mentions.

This one scenario is not definitive by any means and it's evident that more research would need to be conducted.

Similarly to news mentions, it is also possible that there might be some correlation between brand and social mentions (although it definitely does not appear to be a primary factor). To identify and quantify social mentions of handbag brands, Topsy's analytics were used. This chart compares brand mentions of Louis Vuitton handbags, Gucci handbags, and Guess handbags. From the graph, it shows that there has been significantly and consistently more social mentions for Louis Vuitton and Gucci handbags over the past month in comparison to Guess handbags social mentions. Perhaps, this is one of many reasons why Louis Vuitton and Gucci have brand links for handbags, whereas Guess does not.

It'd be interesting to compare current handbag brand links (or any other type of brand link) month by month. Which brands retained their brand link and which ones have lost them? Perhaps, after isolating different scenarios and noticing changes overtime, a better understanding of these links could be developed.

I'm interested to know the SEO community's experience with brand links and any observations that they have made on how these type of links have been acquired. I'm also curious to hear if any SEOs have any stories on how brand links affected brand searches/conversions and whether they are effective in creating brand awareness/increasing the amount of organic traffic or not. Please share your thoughts below; I'd love to hear from you.