Someone asked Googler John Mueller about the situation of articles talking about his site but no mentions of the brand name or domain name were linked to his site during a Google SEO Office hours hangout. He wanted to know if those mentions of his domain and brand name could be interpreted as a signal.
John Mueller’s response was succinct and unambiguous.
Read Are Nofollow Links A Google Ranking Factor?
Mentions of the Brand
The questioner raised the issue of domain name mentions and whether Google treats them similarly to links.
He described a scenario in which websites publish articles that mention a domain or a brand name but do not provide links to the actual websites.
“…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.
…Does Google still able to recognize those mentions, those names and since they have been associated with the parent company or the current particular of the brand that they are working with, does that… some kind of influence…
Just because you have been mentioned on some other places but you are not linked.”
Either it’s a link or it isn’t
Mueller basically answered the question by saying that a brand mention isn’t a link, so it won’t be treated as one.
Google’s John Mueller answered:
“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 a half link worth of mention or something like that.
It’s essentially, there is no link, so there is no signal passing like there would be with any normal link there.
So that’s, I think kind of, the first thing to keep in mind.
That doesn’t mean that… kind of… these mentions are bad or that you need to avoid them or anything like that.
It’s really just, we don’t treat these as links.
And 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 not a link to your site.
So from that point of view, it’s very different.
I wouldn’t put them into the same category.”
There is no signal from brand mentions
Google will not treat a site that mentions a brand or website domain as a link, according to John Mueller.
His answer was clear and unambiguous:
“It’s essentially, there is no link, so there is no signal passing…”
That is to say, if no signal is passing, it has no ranking impact, similar to a link.
Citation
Do Unlinked Mentions Count as Links?
Watch at 46:27 Minute Mark
Learn more from SEO and read Are Internal Links In Footer and Header Treated Differently?
