Tom Capper in conversation with Gene Marks. Thanks to @Paychex Fill video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW8F1oTAixc So we introduced Brand Authority a few years ago as a proxy for sort of Google's understanding of the branded strength of your site. And it turns out that what's happened in the last few years is that although links are still about as good a predictor as they were, say, 10 years ago, brand is a way stronger predictor than it was 10 years ago. And you've seen the flip side of this story about where a lot of small brands or non brands are complaining that search is a much harder game than it used to be. And for them it's true, it is, it is much harder to rank if you are not a brand, certainly for national terms than it used to be, but it's much easier to rank than it used to be if you are a brand. And so again this goes back to my point about surface area, right, where there's so much more that you have to worry about if you want to succeed in search now because it u