Why do big brands rank so well?

Filipe Santos from New York, NY asks:

"As far as big brands go, why is it that they seem to do well irregardless of relevance, content or links when analyzing keyword placement in search engine results pages?"

Recorded on April 23, 2009.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• google
• big
• brands
• ranking

[estanuk]

ZZZzzz, Cutts, I'm sorry, but your full of shit. The answer is simple, for very competetive keywords the higest ranker is usually the person with the biggest budget.

Your always rambling on about quality content. Well what about sites that have static content that is specific to their business and offers no real informational value, yet they still rank very high for competetive keywords. It's because they have a massive SEO budget and can buy plenty of high quality links, end of story.

[MattCutts]

You may not agree with every answer I do, but I wanted to address the question. I don't agree that big sites always do well "irregardless of relevance."

[agapitoflores001]

Good answer Matt. It really helps.

[carlyndolphin]

Some of the best SEO companies are those that rank highly themselves within Google's SERPS for the search terms seo, search engine optmisation and internet marketing. Companies like Just Search, Fresh Egg, Bigmouthmedia, SEO Consult and Greenlight etc. Obviously no SEO company can gurantee 1st page positions, but if they're on the first page they must be good. I've used 1 of these companies (I'm not saying which), otherwise it look like I work for them.

[emmetor]

@MattCutts Matt, you seem like a good guy, and I admit to the odd scathing reply to some of your info provided, I hope you don't take it personally, but i have to call you on this one.

I've analysed site traffic, and rankings for certain keywords, and I have discovered to my surprise, that my rankings have gone quite a bit up since 2006. Thing is, my site has been dead for years.

And that's the point. Practically all the Mom and Pops are dead. Over-reliance of PR killed them.

[KevinMontgomery]

Irregardless is not a word.

[g0ste]

yikes! the word "irregardless" was used. "hrmm... if i make the word longer, it will make me appear more cleverer."

[shakaama]

haha I'm stomping STOMPING all the competition. And, I'm just one guy, with a very crappy website [ doing redesign now] And they, I know for a fact, have teams of people doing SEO for them. When I outranked my greatest competition, I was a happy puppy.

Now sites like wikipedia, has crazy traffic, that's why they rank well. But you can take them down, with effort and skill. They are not always number 1, in fact I've seen them at 7 in some pages.

[playaboule]

Continue from prior Post. As we know this country is driven by small businesses of less than 50 employees. We create the greatest amount of tax revenue, employ overall the most people etc etc but don't get heard. As I said sadly Google seems unable to listen. Bottom line is that if you have the money you can afford to pay to have your staff create links, optimize keywords and learn how to manipulate their position. Hey, isn't that what lobbyists are paid to do!!

[playaboule]

This is sadly a cop out from Google. Its a lot like politics where when a politician is asked a simple but specific question and they deflect it. A question about something that is not working either in the public interest or expectation. The politician gives an evasiveness answer and/or answers with "but the other party doesn't do better.... " In this case "but the big guys complain the opposite"