To my mind, a brand is created when people start remembering your name and search for it. For example, if you have a website called woody's Widgets, then Google will recognize it as a brand when more and more people start searching for "Woody's widgets".

@aristotle has it exactly right about what a brand is - it is a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."

The OP forgets that the job of a search engine like Google is to return the most RELEVANT search results to a query.

They are not, and never have been designed to rank businesses by which has the most limp-wristed social media consultant.

1-A Twitter account that's more than links from contents from your site where you are involved in a discussion with the public.

Twitter accounts busy with many @replies bore me immensely. Why is this good for a search result?

2-A Facebook Web site with original contents not found on the main site, or contents that offers value added benefits that users would not find on the original Web property - a site that goes beyond just hosting a message board and answering users' questions.

Why would Google reward a site where instead of just having the information on the website, you have to have an account on a third party site and leave to find it there? What has inane social activity got to do with the relevancy of search results to my query?

3-A real distinctive visual identity that can exist outside of the Web.

"Acme's new logo is soooooo last year, down to page two for them!"

4-Apps.

Apps are trendy so they have to be mentioned. I think apples would be just as effective a metric. Whichever site has the most apples wins.

5-A Physical newsletter, or similar contents available as printed material and sold on offline networks.

If this was implemented as a ranking factor by Google the amount of waste paper generated would hasten the planet's deforestation problems.

6-Custom gear, props, with your brand.

I can't wait until Google launches their "Apparel algorithm" and every business brings out a range of t-shirts, ties etc to get ahead in the rankings. Marketing consultants can choose the Autumn range instead of doing real work requiring knowledge.

7-Participation in an industry or a public event like a local festival, not only as a sponsor, but as a guest/speaker.

If this was the case, search results would be a buyable popularity contest. (...)

8-Offline third party recognition, references. For example quotes from a local newspaper on an article where they interviewed you on a specific topic

Google already indexes content from local newspapers that are online. If it's not online, chances are it's not a noteworthy source.

9-An endowment or prize under your property's.

Under your property's what?

10-Mix media contents, like a podcast, a YouTube channel show, or a cable show.

Porpoises would be just as good a metric as podcasts. If you don't have a photo of a porpoise on your homepage, you aren't part of the trendy club and you can't rank in search!

@milosevic..have ( I would award you one if it were in my gift to do so ) an internet for common sense :)

@milosevic - I think you have an opinion of what things "should be" - but it's not what Google and Bing are actually up to these days.

They themselves are in a popularity contest, and relevance alone cannot win the day for them - it's only part of the picture. Search engines feel a need to balance relevance with what their users actually click on and respond to (browser-based metrics, for example) and they're already pretty far down that road.

@milosevic, please continue mocking my suggestions which I offered to further benefit the average webmaster. People thinking outside the box are those that usually succeed. Please continuing viewing Websites and ranking in your very narrow vision of what Websites are and how they rank. I'd rather look ahead in uncharted paths, as I'm pretty sure, one day it will matter.

My suggested metrics look at properties in their whole, not only on the Web. It's about what kind of metric a company like Google whose goal is to organize the world's information may use to determine what a brand is.

Links to a radio interview conducted about your property, or mention of your mobile app, using the same name can only help your domain's branding. It also creates genuine links and references to your property. We already know that Google has the mean to scan non Web-based information, like patents, trade-marks, registries, Nasdaq listings and so on. When determining what is a real Website and what is a fly-by-night, don't you think these matters?

Common sense depends on how you define it. For some people, many preferring to remain silent, my metrics have a lot of common sense.

@Harry, I appreciate I played devil's advocate in my previous post somewhat and was perhaps a little sardonic in my humour, so sorry if I caused any offence.

It seems your position is that because a brand is more established and has offline presence, it's inherently better than one that doesn't. I would disagree with this, both philosophically and from personal experience.

Small/new brands that are getting things right shouldn't be penalised (further than they are by current algorithms) purely for not being established entities. Many brands can deliver the best value purely because they concentrate on the online sphere and don't try to compete with the big players in traditional markets.

Searches are not all commercial in nature and lack a defined line between those that are informational and commercial. A site with worse information being ranked higher because it was mentioned on the radio is not good for users.

@tedster - For sure, I was never disputing that, I just don't think that things which are clearly unrelated to online experience and difficult to link to them (such as subjective judgements of a brand's visual identity, or whether they have a range of merchandise or not) should be seriously considered as ranking factors.