Brand signals are becoming more important for Google with every update. Metrics like domain authority, domain age, social shares and author/publisher rank having more impact in the SERPs we can anticipate brands continuing to dominate. While Google has many different metrics to distinguish brands, as time moves forward so to will their methods of differentiation.

Here are a few ideas for what future brand signals may look like as adoption of hardware like Glass and Google operated phones become more prominent.

• Number of times Android phones visit retail locations
• How frequently brands are mentioned in conversations with Glass
• How often influencers mention brands in videos (h/t to my coworker Xander)
• Volume of brand mentions in Android texts and Gmail messages

As Google products hold a bigger place in the physical world (phones, wearable tech, cars, etc), the way their search engine collects and evaluates brand signals will drastically change. Instead of personalizing search on location and browser history, semantic search will be powered by where we go, what we look at and what we say.