methodology / Brand Presence / #20
News mentions in last 30 days
#20 · Variable · Web Quality · weighted · Brand Presence · weight 1.3% · impl implemented · method v1.2.0
Web Quality factor
This factor is part of Web Quality — the weighted 0..100 score that sits above Web Standards. Its weight depends on what kind of site is being measured. Web Standards items take priority; this factor only enters the score once Web Standards passes.
- Base weight
- 0.3 applied to every site type unless overridden below
- Why this weight
- News mentions — high signal for media/news. Bumped corporate from 0.5 to 0.7 after the panel showed established brands (Stripe, NYT, Apple) routinely have legitimate press coverage and the original weight was under-crediting them.
Per-site-type overrides
| Site type | Weight | Δ vs base |
|---|---|---|
| Blog | 0.2 | -0.1 |
| E-commerce | 0.4 | +0.1 |
| Corporate / B2B | 0.7 | +0.4 |
| News / Publisher | 1.0 | +0.7 |
| Personal site | 0.0 | -0.3 |
| Nonprofit | 0.5 | +0.2 |
| Media / Streaming | 0.8 | +0.5 |
Site types not listed inherit the base weight.
What this means for your business
Recent news mentions — local paper, industry blog, podcast — tell both customers and Google that your business is active and relevant. A long silence reads as a business that's gone quiet.
Plain title: Whether anyone's written about you lately
What we measure
Recent press coverage signals an active, newsworthy business and adds Google trust. Each mention is a public credibility token.
How to improve your score
Pitch industry trade publications, contribute thought-leadership content, get quoted in roundup articles, issue press releases when there's real news.
Facts
Scoring
Scoring formulas are versioned with the methodology. The current method (v1.2.0) maps raw measurements to pass, warn, fail. Factor weights determine how much each contributes to the composite — see the methodology index for the full table.
Version history
| Version | Change | Date |
|---|---|---|
| v1.2.0 | Factor introduced. Status: live. Scoring impl: implemented. | 2026-04-25 |