One SEO professional asked John Mueller in a hangout about brand mentions.
They asked: there are a lot of new sites, which are publishing about a particular domain or a particular brand name, but they have not linked that brand name to their particular domain.
These are just mentions. The mentions could be in the form of a brand name, or it could be in the form of a person’s name also.
There could be the CEO, or the VPs of companies that could be present.
Is Google still able to recognize these mentions of those names because they are associated with the current company, or the brands they are working with?
Does this have some kind of influence? The brand name? Just because you have been mentioned on other sites, but you’re not linked, this type of entity?
Let’s say if a new site has written multiple articles on us, on my particular brand or domain name, let’s say three to four articles on a particular topic, and a few pages have been indexed, and a few are not indexed.
If the page is not indexed and they have been linked to us, do they still count from the back-end perspective?
John explained that first, if there’s no link to your pages, then there isn’t really a link there. This is not something where Google would see “Oh, it’s half a link worth of a mention” Or something like that.
It’s “There is no link. There is no passing signal like there would be with any normal link.” John explained that this is the first thing to keep in mind.
That doesn’t mean that these mentions are bad or that you need to avoid them. It’s just really the fact that Google doesn’t treat brand mentions as links.
And that’s about it. This is something where perhaps users will pick that mention, and they will search for your site, and they will go to your site anyway.
But it is not a link to your site. John would not put brand mentions in the same category as links.
This happens at approximately the 46:30 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 6 46:30
Okay, so my second question is related to a backlinking part specially. So let me just break it down into two things. One, there are a lot of new sites, which are publishing about a particular domain or a particular brand name, but they have not linked that brand name to my particular domain. So those are just mentions, however, those mentions could be in the form of a brand name, or it could be in the form of a person’s name as well.
So there could be like, like the CEO, the VPs of my companies, could be present at some of the new site, you know, my, like, they might have spoken to some of the new [INAUDIBLE] as well. So those particular things. Is Google still able to recognize those mentions, those names, and since they are associated with the parent company, or the current particular brand that we are working with?
Does that have some kind of influence has to be [INAUDIBLE] to the particular page, the brand name, just because you have been mentioned on some other places, but you’re not linked. So that particular kind of entity. And if a new site has written multiple articles on us, on my particular brand, or domain name, let’s say three to four articles on a particular topic. Sort of if few pages have been indexed, and a few are not indexed. So if the page is not indexed and they have been still linked to us, so are they still count? From the back-end perspective, from the signals point of view, like these have been referred to you.
John 48:06
I mean, first of all, if there’s no link to your pages, then it’s not really a link there. So it’s not something that we would see kind of like, oh, it’s like a half link worth of mention or something like that. It’s, it’s essentially, there is no link. So there is no signal passing, like there would be with any normal link. So that’s, I think, kind of the the first thing to keep in mind that that doesn’t mean that kind of these these mentions are bad or that you need to avoid them or anything like that. It’s really just like, we don’t treat these as links. And, like, that’s, that’s about it. And it’s something where maybe users will pick that mention, and they will search for your site, and they go to your site anyway. But it’s it’s not a link to your site. So from that point of view, it’s is very different, I wouldn’t put them into the same category.
SEO Professional 6 49:04
Well, how about, you have been linked from some pages, but those pages are not been indexed? So okay, people might be able to discover on some other platforms, some other CMS. They might, but they might not index due to again, two favorite issues, like crawled currently not indexed and discovered currently not indexed. But those mentions or the link has been already present on those particular things. So it is still counted? Just because the page is not indexed and so those links won’t be counted, or even if the page is not indexed, but if there is a link, those two can be counted as well?
John 49:39
Usually, that wouldn’t count, because for a link, in our systems at least, we always need a source and a destination. And both of those sides need to be canonical indexed URLs. And if we don’t have any source at all in our systems, then essentially that link disappears because we don’t know what to do with it.
So that means if the source page is completely dropped out of our search results, then we don’t really have any link that we can use there. Obviously, of course, if another page were to copy that original source and also show that link, and then we go off and index that other page, then that would be like a link from that other page to your site. But that original link, if that original page is no longer indexed, then that would not count as a normal link.
