by Nour | Mar 22, 2022 | Uncategorized
Vistra, a major U.S. power producer, had a problem. For its plants to operate efficiently, workers had to continuously monitor hundreds of different indicators, tracking temperatures, pressures, oxygen levels, and pump and fan speeds — and they had to make adjustments in real time. The process involved a huge amount of complexity, and it was too much for even the most skilled operator to get right all the time. To address this challenge, the plant installed an AI-powered tool — a heat-rate optimizer — that analyzed hundreds of inputs and generated recommendations every 30 minutes. Result: a 1% increase in efficiency. That may not sound like much, but it translates into millions in savings as well as lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Companies in a wide range of industries are trying to integrate analytics and data to improve their operations. Wayfair, the e-commerce company, was an early mover in shifting its data to the cloud and investing in machine learning. When Covid-19 hit, and rapid changes to consumer demand followed, it was able to optimize container ship logistics, continually adjusting what goods were sent to which ports. Result: an astonishing 7.5% reduction in inbound logistics costs.
Not all companies have been as successful as Wayfair, however. In fact, top performers can have more than twice the impact in half the time compared to the average company implementing machine intelligence. Why do some companies do so much better than others?
To answer that question, McKinsey and MIT’s Machine Intelligence for Manufacturing and Operations (MIMO) studied 100 businesses in sectors from automotive to mining. Through interviews, research, and a survey, we sought to get a sense of how they used digital, data analytics, and machine intelligence (MI) technologies; what they wanted to achieve; and how they kept track of their progress. By looking at 21 performance indicators across nine categories — strategy, opportunity focus, governance, deployment, partnerships, people, data execution, budget, and results — we were able to divide the 100 companies into four categories: leaders, planners, executors, and emerging organizations to identify the relationships between actions taken and investments made, and tangible and sustainable outcomes.
Any company with ambitions to gain from advanced digital technologies has the opportunity learn from best practice approaches, whether it is a planner, an executor, or an emerging company today. We take a look beyond the top-level numbers to explore the underlying drivers of success.
The Secrets Behind Smart Operators
The race to leverage data and analytics could be won with multiple coordinated actions rather than any single bold move. All four segments — leaders, planners, executers, and emerging companies — are operating in a dynamic space where the bar is rising and the number of machine learning use cases will continue to increase and embed themselves into business-as-usual.
Not everyone should strive to be a leader immediately; they should instead strive to move to the next better state.
Leaders are the highest performers and comprise about 15% of the sample. By investing in the right places, they have captured the largest gains from advanced digital technologies. Leaders are much more likely to have a defined process for the assessment and implementation of digital innovation. They are also more likely to follow that process regularly and to update it continually. As a result, they have achieved significantly larger improvements than the rest in 20 of the 21 key performance indicators evaluated and were in the top 25% in all nine performance categories.
Planners comprise about a quarter of the data set. Planners often have strong people skills and considerable data execution expertise; they are methodical and focused on making the right investments. In many cases, though, these haven’t paid off yet, though a few are on the cusp of joining the leaders. While some planners are able to point to successful implementations, several have been unable to crack the code on scaling the use cases that really count. Others are struggling to escape from the “pilot purgatory” McKinsey described in 2018.
Executors, approximately a third of the respondents, tap into the ever-increasing pool of expertise and work with partners to create specific solutions directed at the most promising opportunities. Then they implement these solutions as broadly as they can. Executors are results-oriented. They can and have achieved significant gains, despite building less infrastructure than the leaders or planners. On the other hand, they sometimes find it difficult to knit together disparate efforts into company-wide performance.
Emerging companies, about a quarter of the pool, have the lowest level of maturity and have seen the smallest gains; many are just getting started. Some emerging companies report moderate success with select use cases, but others are finding it difficult even to figure out where to invest. Few have the strategy, skills or infrastructure in place to go much further.
Five Ways to Get Smart About Machine Intelligence
In general, we found that companies that succeeded in the deployment of advanced digital technologies did an honest assessment of where they were in terms of the nine performance indicators. On that basis, they were able to form a vision of where they wanted to be in three or four years. At the same time, they identified a few promising use cases to rack up quick wins. More specifically, the research identified five areas where the top performers stand out.
Governance.
Machine intelligence is a strategic priority for leading companies. Many have built dedicated centers of excellence to support their implementation efforts, either within business units or as a centralized function to support the entire organization, ensure standards, and accelerate deployment. A dedicated and centralized support function also helps keep their digital programs on track and documents how their portfolio is progressing. Leaders are much more likely than lower-performing companies to have a defined process for the assessment of and implementation of digital innovation. For example, the pharmaceutical firm Bayer uses a well-documented governance process to deploy multiple applications at one plant, which it then rolled out across its network, resulting in a revenue lift.
However, leaders also recognize that change is inevitable in this fast-moving space. Most of the leaders in our data set continually refine and improve their processes, whereas executors and planners in our data set often get stuck, which limits the ability to scale successfully.
Deployment.
Leading organizations apply MI more widely and use more sophisticated approaches. For example, every single leader implemented MI in forecasting, maintenance optimization, and logistics and transportation. The leaders are also much more likely to adopt advanced approaches, such as the application of machine vision to product quality assurance. One biopharma player, Amgen, found that visual inspection system operations posed great opportunities to automate and leverage AI technologies. Amgen is developing a fully validated visual inspection system using AI that will boost particle detection 70% and cut false rejects by 60%.
While applications like these can have tremendous impact, these firms also realize that any long-term impact requires pulling multiple levers in concert, and that broad, enterprise-wide deployment is key.
Partnerships.
Partnerships are common, often with academia, start-ups, existing technology vendors, and external consultants. Leaders, however, worked with a wider range of partners, and more intensively, in order to maximize speed and learning. For example, Colgate-Palmolive and Pepsico/Frito-lay, two consumer product companies worked with a systems vendor, Augury, deployed AI-driven machine health diagnostics on their production lines; in one case, this prevented an eight-day outage. Analog Devices, a semiconductor firm, collaborated with MIT to develop a novel MI quality-control that allowed it to identify which production runs and tools might have a fault. This meant that company engineers only had to review 5% of the process data they had to before.
Leaders, despite their higher capabilities, actually relied more on external partners to further accelerate their learning and time to impact.
People.
Leading companies take steps to ensure that as many stakeholders as possible have the skills and resources they need to employ advanced digital approaches, rather than keeping this expertise the preserve of specialists. More than half train their front-line personnel in MI fundamentals, for example, compared to only 4% of other companies. McDonald’s, a global quick-service restaurant, used MI to improve a wide range of operational tasks, from predicting customer response to forecasting real time footfall. The company adopted a hybrid approach to do this: its corporate center of excellence tests and develops new approaches before packaging them into easy-to-use tools that are made widely available. This system helps team members in the field understand the importance of good data and hone their problem identification skills.
It became clear that leaders view the use of data and analytics as deeply embedded to how they operate, rather than keeping it siloed and restricted to a few employees.
Data availability.
Leaders make data accessible. All of the leaders in our research give frontline staff access to data, compared to 62% of the rest. The leaders also all acquire data from customers and suppliers, and 89% share their own data back. Leading companies are almost twice as likely as others to enable remote access to data and to store a significant fraction of their data in the cloud. In short, the democratization of data is a critical aspect to the effective use of analytics. A good example comes from Cooper Standard, an automotive supplier. It requires teams to address data strategy early in the development process for new MI applications; this ensures that all uses cases are built on robust, well-managed data. This democratization of data stands in stark contrast to many firms where information is power and zealously guarded.
Building Blocks for Digital Transformation
We found that the five areas — governance, deployment, partnerships, people, and data — were most effective when integrated into a playbook, often coordinated by a center of excellence. But first, companies need an honest assessment of their starting point across the nine dimensions. From there, a transition plan can start to take shape. Even if it’s rough, it assigns realist medium-term targets that account for the barriers to change — skilled talent, investment capacity, and critical infrastructure such as the migration of data from legacy systems to the cloud. While the ambition can be boundless, the steps cannot be too small — most leaders started with using data and simple tools to make decisions, then moved to more advanced techniques as they built maturity and familiarity with their data.
Despite the recent and significant advances in MI, the full scale of the opportunity is just beginning to unfold. And that brings us to one more important difference between the leaders and the rest: money. The leaders spent 30 to 60% more and they expected to increase their budgets 10 to 15%, while the others reported little or no rises. That means the gap between the leaders and the rest could actually widen.
Depending on its starting point, each company’s path will be different. But in terms of what works, the leaders are showing the way.
The authors would like to thank Duane Boning, Erez Kaminski, Pete Kimball, Retsef Levi, Ingrid Millan, and Aaron Wang, along with MIT’s LGO program, for their contributions to this research and article.
Source :
https://hbr.org/2022/02/what-makes-a-company-successful-at-using-ai?fbclid=IwAR2KTxwdTYMxO0yBD-4t95j3vDao3xw915T6a6MUbuK1zQ5Q9sjNoVzie84
by Nour | Mar 17, 2022 | Uncategorized
If we have learned one thing from the past year, it’s that things can change in an instant — changes we thought we had years to prepare for, behaviors we assumed we’d stick to forever, expectations we have of ourselves and our organizations. This is true of the way we live, the way we work, and the way we shop and buy as consumers.
In early 2021, the EY Future Consumer Index (Index), which has surveyed thousands of consumers since the early days of the pandemic, found that 80% of U.S. consumers are still changing the way they shop. Sixty percent are currently visiting brick-and-mortar stores less than before the pandemic, and 43% shop more often online for products they would have previously bought in stores. One of the most significant effects of Covid-19 is the realization that, for many of us, geographical location has become less relevant — so long as there’s an internet connection. This flexibility allows more consumers to move away from urban centers; the latest Index data shows that 26% of respondents plan to live in less densely populated areas, up from 22% in April of 2020.
Using the EY Embryonic platform, we also saw, almost overnight, e-commerce strategies shift from a perpetual top priority on every retailer’s three-year plan to a desperately needed lifeline that could enable them to survive a global pandemic. We found that retailers made approximately $10 billion in e-commerce investments, acquisitions and partnerships from May to July 2020. These investments spanned logistics capabilities to enable last-mile, asset-light approaches like ghost kitchens (restaurants with a space for kitchen equipment and facilities, but no dining area for walk-in customers) and dark stores (retail distribution centers that cater exclusively to online shopping), as well as product portfolio investments geared toward digital capabilities in AI and blockchain.
For some retailers, this past year has accelerated previously existing efforts to innovate. But for many others, it has spurred a great reset of the way they think about consumers’ needs and the future of digital commerce.
What consumer experience do you want to create?
To be successful in e-commerce, you need to think bigger than e-commerce. The core question retailers must ask themselves first is not, “What e-commerce investments do I need to make?” but rather, “What consumer experience do I need to offer?”
This is a culture change for many retailers who’ve long had a mentality that’s anchored in brick-and-mortar stores. The consumer experience is rapidly evolving from one that’s built upon the transactional process of in-store shopping to one that’s rooted in deep, ongoing and enriching relationships. As a retailer, you need to create an interwoven journey that’s relevant to your target consumer — and structure your channel ecosystem, e-commerce included, in a way that provides value along that journey.
Considering the consumer’s entire journey is especially important in today’s environment, where people’s social needs, such as feeling a sense of community, will impact their buying habits as the conditions of the pandemic continue to change. While the shift toward online shopping will likely remain, the desire for post-pandemic social interaction will likely drive people back to stores. Case in point: The Index found that 38% of consumers intend to do more shopping online and visit stores that provide great experiences.
In order to offer consumers the journey they need, retailers must understand the future of experience-led capabilities. E-commerce is a key piece of that future. But it’s not just about being online — it’s about doing it right and continuing to consider how in-person shopping fits into the customer’s overall journey.
So, how can retailers think about this integrated consumer journey, and how e-commerce fits into it? Here are some core questions to help define investment and operating model decisions.
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Do I have an agile, adaptive technology platform that understands that every consumer journey is different?
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Is my organizational structure free of silos — which isolate e-commerce, merchandising, store operations, supply chain, and marketing — that interrupt the experience?
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Have I considered my assortment congruity — what’s online and what’s in store and the logic behind channel exclusivity?
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How can I be price-competitive and still maintain margin? For example, how can I introduce impulse purchases in an online environment? What role does store layout and merchandising play in this?
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How do I orchestrate the consumer journey from digital to physical and back again?
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And finally, how do I maintain the experience all the way to consumers’ doorsteps?
It all comes down to delivery.
E-commerce success depends on the last mile.
Today’s consumers aren’t keen on excuses, especially when it comes to accessibility, affordability, and convenience. The Index found that only one in five (21%) U.S. consumers say they are forgiving retailers and brands for service disruptions due to Covid-19. In other words, the pandemic is no longer a reasonable excuse for not delivering orders on time. Today, retailers are vying for limited shipping capacity in the last mile due to surges in online shopping. As many of us experienced after Black Friday in 2020, it took weeks for products to finally arrive on our doorsteps. Even the most advanced e commerce capabilities can’t conceal the importance of fulfillment, as delivery becomes a cornerstone of the experience.
The store as fulfillment center.
The Index found that 37% of U.S. consumers will buy online and pick up in store more often in the future. But buyer beware: curbside or in-store pickup can quickly lose its luster if consumers endure long wait times in a jammed-up parking lot, or if their local store inventory can’t accommodate their online purchases. So, while the store as a fulfillment center can be an effective strategy, it requires systems and business units that communicate with each other to deliver on the promise. As services scale, so must retailers’ ability to deliver a consistent experience.
Regardless of how consumer behavior continues to change, retailers must be prepared to continue to develop stronger deeper relationships with their customers — both online and in person.
Source :
https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-e-commerce-fits-into-retails-post-pandemic-future?fbclid=IwAR0iPgVslWAa8HPtdKuR4pNz1uQyHZIGMYy0mgMsNMugxQjMJRkTYdWghJA
by Nour | Mar 11, 2022 | Uncategorized
According to UN trade and development experts UNCTAD, the e-commerce sector saw a “dramatic” rise in its share of all retail sales, from 16 per cent to 19 per cent in 2020.
The digital retail economy experienced most growth in the Republic of Korea, where internet sales increased from around one in five transactions in 2019, to more than one in four last year.
“These statistics show the growing importance of online activities”, said Shamika Sirimanne, UNCTAD’s director of technology and logistics. “They also point to the need for countries, especially developing ones, to have such information as they rebuild their economies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The UK also saw a spike in online transactions over the same period, from 15.8 to 23.3 per cent; so too did China (from 20.7 to 24.9 per cent), the US (11 to 14 per cent), Australia (6.3 to 9.4 per cent), Singapore (5.9 to 11.7 per cent) and Canada (3.6 to 6.2 per cent).
Online business-to-consumer (B2C) sales for the world’s top 13 companies stood at $2.9 trillion in 2020, UNCTAD said on Friday.
Bumpy ride
UNCTAD also said that among the top 13 e-commerce firms – most being from China and the US – those offering ride-hailing and travel services have suffered.
These include holiday site Expedia, which fell from fifth place in 2019 to 11th in 2020, a slide mirrored by travel aggregator, Booking Holdings, and Airbnb.
By comparison, e-firms offering a wider range of services and goods to online consumers fared better, with the top 13 companies seeing a more than 20 per cent increase in their sales – up from 17.9 per cent in 2019.
These winners include Shopify, whose gains rose more than 95 per cent last year – and Walmart (up 72.4 per cent).
Cashing-up
Overall, global e-commerce sales jumped to $26.7 trillion in 2019, up four per cent from a year earlier, the UN number-crunchers noted, citing the latest available estimates.
In addition to consumer online purchases, this figure includes “business-to-business” (B2B) trade, which put together was worth 30 per cent of global gross domestic product two years ago.
Source :
https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/05/1091182?fbclid=IwAR0PTLur5qU7nDk9rSaNNLYB6iJcA1tV9RmrA8h2a8le5xXrOYYI5lR5jcc
by Nour | Mar 6, 2022 | Uncategorized
The pandemic accelerated the uptake of e-commerce globally as people turned online in the face of lockdown restrictions. According to Forrester, there was a 25.7% surge in 2020 to make e-commerce worth $4.2tn and it expects retail sales worldwide to climb a further 16.8% in 2021.
It has also meant more customers than every are buying from retailers beyond their borders. Zion Market Research has found the global cross-border e-commerce delivered revenues to the tune of $562.1bn in 2018. By 2027 that figure is predicted to reach nearly $5tn.
This comes in the face of massively changing consumer expectations for product availability and delivery.
“The base level of shopper expectations have shifted. When Amazon launched Prime, shrinking standard delivery times from weeks to days, it was a game changer. However, it has only taken a few years for anything more than a couple of days to be completely unacceptable,” says Rob Sellers, head of retail at VCCP.
“Wherever products are manufactured or however complex the supply chain to get them to our houses, we expect almost immediate fulfilment.”
KPMG’s 2020 UK retail report found that 43% of consumers now select next-day delivery, a 4% rise on last year, while a massive 73% say they would have been dissuaded from a purchase if there had been a delivery charge associated with this, compared to 57% a year earlier.
The duration consumers are willing to wait for free shipping is also falling, from an average of 5.5 days in 2012 to 4.5 a year ago.
“But the average shopper has absolutely no appreciation of the complexities of the global supply chain,” continues Sellers. “They trust big platforms and retail brands, like Amazon, Nike and John Lewis, to handle that for them. What they care about is getting the product they want – when they want it and at a price they want.”
And at the moment, that comes at a huge environmental cost. According to Boston Consulting Group, transportation activities account for 17% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Over 90% of world trade moves by sea with maritime shipping accounting for 3% of all global emissions – a figure that could rise to 10% by 2050 according to experts.
Meanwhile, on land, the World Economic Forum estimates a 36% uptick in the number of delivery vehicles on our roads in the next decade.
But KPMG found that consumers also expect brands to be more sustainable in their supply chain. Over a third (37%) of shoppers now base their buying decisions on retailers’ ethical and sustainability policies, while 67% consumers claim to care more about the environmental impact of the goods they buy today than they did five years ago.
Nearly half (43%) of shoppers were frustrated or dissuaded from the purchasing process due to the packaging used, and with a growing expectation for lower-emission delivery and logistics procedures, KPMG urges that this is one area in which retailers have no choice but to move with the times.
Yet the trade off for speed is that orders can’t be consolidated, meaning more packaging waste. There’s also fewer packages dropped off per mile, and therefore more delivery vehicles on roads.
In an effort to maintain its delivery targets, Amazon has been building its own air fleet to rival the likes of UPS and FedEx.
“Most people say they are willing to pay more for sustainable brands, but many also wonder why they should have to,” says Michelle Whelan, chief executive of VMLY&R Commerce.
“The bottom line is that consumers are torn three ways. They want it cheap, they want it now and they’d also like it guilt-free. They do care, but they won’t necessarily do anything about it. The onus is therefore on brands to remove the friction of guilt in a way that keeps life convenient and affordable for customers, or make it a truly meaningful part of the experience.”
In response to the spotlight on the damaging impact of cargo shipping, last week a raft of brands including Ikea, Patagonia and Unilever signed a pledge to only use zero-carbon ships by 2040.
There are other brands trying to do e-commerce globally differently. Luxury marketplace Farfetch, for example, has baked sustainability into its business plan, creating several features including carbon-neutral shipping and return, with the brand taking responsibility for offsetting emissions. It has also built-in circularity, selling pre-owned products as well as in-season items and enabling easy donation to charities. It has established a Positively Conscious initiative, which enables shoppers to buy brands according to ethical and environmental criteria. Sales via this are growing faster than the overall Farfetch marketplace.
“It’s difficult for the consumer to truly understand the supply chain as there is not enough transparency from the brands and retailers. We even see that within companies there is not a holistic understanding of sustainability throughout the supply chain,” says Neda Eneva, global marketing director at Arch & Hook.
Arch & Hook is an Amsterdam-based startup that’s working with retailers to provide sustainable alternatives on things like hangers, furniture and fixtures, and transportation.
Eneva continues: “There is a gap between a consumer’s awareness of the environmental impact of the brand they buy and its sourcing and supply chain journey. There is also usually a gap between pricing for locally designed/sourced goods and imported goods from Asia for example.”
Brands like Everlane, H&M-owned Arket and Reformation are approaching this through the lens of “radical transparency”. When you shop on their sites, you’ll be given a breakdown of every part of the supply chain and how it factors into the end cost of the product.
Reformation has developed a methodology called ’RefScale’, which measures and shares the environmental impact of every garment it sells, such as volume of carbon dioxide and amount of water used in production.
“Other brands, including Allbirds and Veja, have found cultural kudos and justified premium pricing because of ethical behavior, not in spite of it,” continues Sellers.
“Projection of personal value through brands we choose to wear has always been a truth of fashion, but now those values are as likely to be broadly beneficial to the planet or society as much as they might be about other social standings.
“So the hope is that the standout behavior of some beacon brands, and some broad improvements from some of the biggest players, will stack up to a total reduction on the negative impact – either societal or environmental – that the total category has.”
Source : https://www.thedrum.com/news/2021/10/22/global-e-commerce-booming-are-consumers-happy-with-the-environmental-cost?fbclid=IwAR3MEGgUUfmVZplt29ZE7Js_SpFmGqBJyOGbA-eK1i9AWjXx1dHFJanROG4
by Nour | Mar 2, 2022 | Uncategorized
Google’s John Mueller was asked if “unlinked brand mentions” were important in Google’s algorithm. It was apparent from John’s response that “brand mentions” is probably not a real thing in Google’s algorithm, but he also said that there may be value to site visitors who encounter them.
Brand Mentions
There is a longstanding idea in the SEO community that Google uses mentions of a website as a form of link.
One version of the idea is that if someone publishes a URL like this, https://www.example.com but without making it a link, that Google probably counts it as a link. This is the unlinked URL idea, that a published URL can be used as a link by Google.
The unlinked URL idea subsequently evolved into the idea that if a website mentions another site’s brand name, that Google will also count that as a link. This is the “brand mentions” idea.
But there was never any evidence of that until around 2012 when Google published a patent called Ranking Search Results.
The patent was several pages long and buried deep in the middle of it was the mention of an “implied link” being used as a type of link, which was different from an “express link” which is described as a traditional hyperlink.
The phrase “implied links” only occurs a couple times in this one paragraph.
Two Main Ranking Factors Discussed in the Patent
To understand what the authors meant by an implied link you have to scroll up the page back to a section labeled “Background” where the authors explain what all the patent is about.
These are the two most important factors discussed in the patent:
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The authors explain they are using independent links to a website as part of the ranking process. They call the site being linked to a”target resource.”
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The authors also say that they are ranking search results by using search queries that contain a reference to a website, what they again call a “target resource.”
The patent explains without ambiguity that this second type of link is a search query that uses a brand name, what the SEO industry calls Branded Search Queries.
Where the patent makes a reference to a “group of resources,” it is referring to a group of web pages.
A resource is a web page or a website.
A group of resources is a group of web pages or websites.
One more time:
When the patent mentions a “resource” it’s talking about web pages or websites.
The patent states:
“A query can be classified as referring to a particular resource if the query includes a term that is recognized by the system as referring to the particular resource.
For example, a term that refers to a resource may be all of or a portion of a resource identifier, e.g., the URL, for the resource.
For example, the term “example.com” may be a term that is recognized as referring to the home page of that domain, e.g., the resource whose URL is “http://www.example.com”.
Thus, search queries including the term “example.com” can be classified as referring to that home page.
As another example, if the system has data indicating that the terms “example sf” and “esf” are commonly used by users to refer to the resource whose URL is “http://www.sf.example.com,” queries that contain the terms “example sf” or “esf”, e.g., the queries “example sf news” and “esf restaurant reviews,” can be counted as reference queries for the group that includes the resource whose URL is “http://www.sf.example.com.” “
The above explanation defines what the authors call “reference queries.”
A reference query is what the SEO community refers to as branded search queries.
A branded search query is a search someone performs on Google using a keyword plus the brand name, the domain of a website or even a URL, which is exactly what the patent defines as reference queries.
What the algorithm described in the patent does with those “reference queries” (branded search queries) is to use them like links.
The algorithm generates what’s called a “modification factor” which modifies (re-ranks) the search results according to this additional data.
The additional data is:
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A re-count of inbound links using only “independent” links (links not associated with the site being ranked.)
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Reference queries (branded search queries) are used as a type of link.
Here is what the patent states:
“The system generates a modification factor for the group of resources from the count of independent links and the count of reference queries…”
What the patent is doing is it is filtering out some hyperlinks in order to only use independent links and also to use branded search queries as another type of link, what can be defined as an implied link.
How the Idea of Brand Mentions Was Born
Some in the SEO community took one paragraph out of context in order to build their “brand mentions” idea.
The paragraph begins by talking about using independent links for ranking search results, just as is described in the background section of the patent.
“The system determines a count of independent links for the group (step 302).
A link for a group of resources is an incoming link to a resource in the group, i.e., a link having a resource in the group as its target.”
The above statement matches exactly what the entire patent talks about, independent links.
The next section is the part about “implied links” that has confused the search industry for the past ten years.
Two things to note in order to more easily understand what is written:
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A “source resource” is the source of a link, the page that is linking out.
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A “target resource” is what is being linked to (and ranked).
This is what the patent says:
“Links for the group can include express links, implied links, or both.
An express link, e.g., a hyperlink, is a link that is included in a source resource that a user can follow to navigate to a target resource.
An implied link is a reference to a target resource, e.g., a citation to the target resource, which is included in a source resource but is not an express link to the target resource.
Thus, a resource in the group can be the target of an implied link without a user being able to navigate to the resource by following the implied link.”
The key to what an “implied link” is contained in the very first mention of the phrase, implied link.
Here it is again, with my emphasis:
“An implied link is a reference to a target resource…”
Clearly, the use of the words “reference” is the second part of what the patent talks about, reference queries.
The patent talks about reference queries (aka branded search queries) from the beginning to the end.
In retrospect it was a mistake for some in the SEO industry to build an entire theory about brand mentions from a single paragraph that was removed from the context of the entire patent.
It’s clear that “implied links” are not about brand mentions.
But that’s background information on how “brand mentions” was popularized.
Question About Unlinked Brand Mentions
The question about brand mentions had a lot of background information to unpack. So thanks for sticking around for that because knowing it is helpful to understanding the question and John Mueller’s answer.
Here is the question that was asked:
“In some articles I see people are speaking about unlinked brand mention.
I want to know your opinion in this case.
Do you think it’s also important for algorithm, unlinked brand mention?”
Are Brand Mentions Important to Google’s Algorithm?
The concept of “brand mentions” appeared to be unclear to John Mueller.
So Mueller, asked a follow up question:
“How do you mean, “brand mentions?”
The person asking the question elaborated on what he meant:
“It’s like another website and article speaking about my website brand, but it doesn’t link to me.”
John Mueller answered:
“I don’t know.
I think that’s kind of tricky because we don’t really know what the context is there.
I mean, I don’t think it’s a bad thing, just for users.
Because if they can find your website through that mention, then that’s always a good thing.
But I wouldn’t assume that there’s like some… I don’t know… SEO factor that is trying to figure out where someone is mentioning your website name.”
Brand Mentions Are Not an SEO Factor
John Mueller confirmed that brand mentions are not a search engine optimization factor.
Given that the foundation of the “brand mentions” idea is built on one paragraph of a patent that’s been taken out of context, I would hope the SEO community will set aside the idea that “brand mentions” are an SEO factor.
Mueller did say that brand mentions can be useful for helping users become aware of a website. And I agree that’s a good way to think about brand mentions as a way to get the word out about a website.
But brand mentions are not an SEO factor.
Just Because it’s in a Patent Doesn’t Mean it’s in Use
One last note about the patent that mentions “reference queries.”
It’s important to understand that something isn’t necessarily in use by Google just because it appears in a patent or a research paper.
Source : https://www.searchenginejournal.com/brand-mentions-googles-algorithm/439801/?fbclid=IwAR1MzbYURYpuquDjezC7ZMjqz5Dtv0MJOjDr-Rr1kt6Aj9TjOTR6Q9XxwGI#close
