Dear Monica, We Changed our Algo - Google's Matt Cutts by Andrew Goodman, Traffick (Mar 5)
Has some information on Google's recent tweaks to ranking algorithms to give "trusted" sites a small boost.
"Matt [Cutts] says that Google doesn't think brand when it thinks about quality and authority ("if we did, you'd see Mitsubishi Eclipse ranking #1 for [eclipse]"), but this is disingenous. Indirectly, when you take that VW example, they are thinking brand when they take a shortcut that calls the VW.com domain "known information" and put a higher threshold of "track record required" on pages of sites that aren't as known and trusted. "
Video with Matt Cutts and comment are in this posting at Seroundtable -
Google Confirms Algorithm "Change" But Down Plays Brand Push