Google's recent research into search's impact on branding echo the results featured in Guava's UK Search Engine Marketing Report published in April this year.

When asked what the primary objectives of search campaigns were;  the importance of branding as a primary objective of Search Engine Marketing was clearly of great importance to our respondents, with SEO having a significant increase in 2008.

The Google research coincided with Orange's 'I am' campaign which encourages people to search for their tagline rather than visiting the website direct. Searchers will find an Orange sponsored link at the top of the page however they have no presence in the natural listings on either Google or Yahoo!.  Therefore it's happy days for websites such as I am bored and the official I am Kloot  band  site who are no doubt receiving a little extra traffic of late!

However, in contrast to our research which showed that respondents  from both the agency and client-side felt that  SEO had more impact on  the brand than PPC, Google's concluded that holding the top PPC position alone can increase purchase consideration by 20%.

Agency respondents