Just because your sites aren't ranking does not mean the results are not relevant. If you search for a specific product name, then why shouldn't Google show the brands for that product? Did you look at the mathematics of the semantics analysis? I would not be surprised if the product and brand keywords were extremely connected to one another.

In case someone might think that the current algo favors just one thing or another - think again. I would caution anyone from thinking the algo is that simple. There are many moving parts, filters and penalties at work. I would encourage people to think of the algorithm in more holistic terms. Think about what synergy is being created with your on page content, off site backlinks, social campaigns, usage signals, and the 100 other things that Google looks at. Are you providing something isn't already offered on 100 other websites? That is what I would strategize about.

good luck

Are you providing something isn't already offered on 100 other websites? That is what I would strategize about.

Agreed. I suggest you visit these brands to see how useful their materiel is.
If you provide additional (better organized) info, site wide, I bet you're going to outrank them one day.

How do you strategize for the future beyond this current self inflicted Google spam? What should webmasters be looking to do for the next stage of product promotion.

I'm not so sure that you do strategize, the mangement team of google recently described your exact situation here:

And we believe being able to do product listing ads gets us closer to intent because if somebody types a Nikon D800 then we know they are looking to buy or looking to get more information about a specific product and the fact that we can show them reviews pictures and pricing information gets us closer to action. And we believe in the medium term that’s going to create more monetization and a better monetization for us as opposed to having just 10 blue links of ads we’d send them to other websites.

[seekingalpha.com...]

The algorithm is designed to satisfy management objectives so if you are trying to squeeze in a "blue link" that leads to your web site, they have already decided that isn't in their game plan. The algo may have thousands of different things it considers when calculating a result but it looks like monetization is the prime driver.

If you search for a specific product name, then why shouldn't Google show the brands for that product

@goodroi - They should [ maybe i was unclear, apologies ] - let me put it this way :

No 1 : Product domain / actual business - this is the actual brand
Top slots : All brand resellers with reviews - I'm talking your major website brands.

No other consideration appears to be there. There really is no variety, there's only so many reviews a person can read. And the one's with the most reviews wins.

Surely, some day Google will adjust to the next quality score indicator. But no idea at present as to what that might be.

In the widget serps I look at, its the websites with the largest web footprint that wins, what I mean is, the strongest brand, the most talked about website, and that usually translates into just 2 names for US searches and in the UK, one other name joins the mix

I curious tho, If one spends hours/days/months coming up with something no one else is offering, does any here find that its translated into valuable rankings ?

i've been down that road before, quite a few times actually, and still didn't rank for diddly, whats more a couple of months latter everyone was doing the same stuff including the tops sites and yes , their ranking never slipped once

@scooterdude I've had success with spending the extra effort to develop original offerings not found elsewhere.

Let's say all the sites in your industry have a shopping catalog - then I would add product reviews to my catalog. Then the competition copies the idea, so I would then add articles about repair & maintenance for the products. Some of the competition eventually copies that so I keep raising the bar and I add video demonstrations for my products or maybe I add user submitted photos of the product.

With a good bit of creativity you can figure out what isn't offered that ALSO would be wanted by users. This creates a winning synergy of boosting site usage, reinforcing your brand and providing more content which is good for users and SEO.

Do you think the current search engines are capable of recognizing the added value of new innovations or are they not reliant on other evidence of increased user engagement such as increased inward bound links, increased social media chatter etc