I'll be honest: they are many ways of becoming a brand (a famous blogger for example) but most require advertising, and lots of it. If you advertise the rest falls into place. That's why you see Verizon, Exxon, GE, Disney and others advertising everywhere and sometimes just to have their logo on the banner or name on the text link. They don't care as much about getting clicks (that's an obvious bonus) but they want you to see their logo, name to know that they exist and that they are nice, blah blah. They also give money to charities, sponsor stupid causes for press etc.

IMO, brands matter in the niche you are in so you don't have to spend $2 Billion a year to pass Disney but you may need to catch up with your niche competitors. And then the brand needs to be maintained so advertising, press releases, news mentions etc to let the people know that you still exist, has to continue.

Yes, brands are the way to go. When I started it never occured to me that my shop could be a brand in itself. I thought of myself as just another online shop selling brands. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

You know you are a brand when people search for your website in Google instead of the topics it covers.

I only realized this when I started to bid on my website name in adwords. Funny that others had realized this before me and already were bidding on it already.

I agree, "brandrank" is a very good way of expressing it.

We all started out with banner ads, gave them up for other more specific advertising. And now we come back full circle. Banner ads were useless at anything other than building a brand, and that's now very, very important.

Seriously, I am going to get some decals to put on my motorhome to advertise my main site. Anything to make others aware of the brand.

How does Google gauge a brand?

pure conjecture here, but possible ways they could guage brand:

• brandname in anchor-text of links pointing to you. or brandname mentions near links pointing to you
  
• brandname search queries. for those with a generic-word brandname (like apple), google could track searches for "apple" and the number of people that click-through to apple.com and then don't quickly return to the SERPs
  
• brandname mentions in content about your field.

The more I think about it, I'm not convinced 'Brand Rank' is actually a thing - I wonder if its more coincidence that the type of signals Google is using to seperate spam just happen to be things that 'Brands' have.

So, Lots of citations, particulary of physical business locations, phone numbers, widespread logo distribution...these are all things that spammers won't do, legitmate businesses will, and can be measured on an algorithmic level. And, of course, these are all factors created by branding campaigns and PR as opposed to just SEO.

So, in a post-panda world, companies that have been distributing their efforts rather than focusing on just those with the largest ROI suddenly have a legup. And these tend to be the big brands who can afford to do that. Hence the seeming 'Brand Bias'

Seriously, I am going to get some decals to put on my motorhome to advertise my main site. Anything to make others aware of the brand.

Too many web related businesses seem to ignore off line publicity. Companies like Go Companre and Wonga.com didn't get their recognition by relying on the SERPS.

@almightymonkey "widespread logo distribution...these are all things that spammers won't do, legitmate businesses will"

Exactly, since conventional SEO is diminishing. Perhaps, getting nofollow banner links using the name brand as ALT can be effective. Perhaps also, Text Link ads are no less effective than a link using brand name as anchor even if nofollow.