Official Google answer: Can you verify that Google is putting more weight on "brands" in search engine rankings?

Question:

Can you verify that Google is putting more weight on "brands" in search engine rankings? If the answer is "yes"– what is Google's definition of a brand?

Google’s Matt Cutts answers:

Summary of the answer:

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Question	Views
I keep a "blogroll" page with links to all my friends' blogs on my blog. Will that affect my blog's reputation in Google?	1,181
Is it OK to sell links as long as we use the nofollow attribute?	1,091
If you have a lot of blog content for a new section of a site (100+ pages), is it best to release it over a period of time, or is it fine to just unleash 100 pages?	1,118
How can a website compete for high rankings using only white hat techniques in industries that are dominated by spammers if Google takes months to react to spam reports and by that time new black hat sites are ranking?	1,315
Do tag clouds help or hinder SEO?	1,455
Is there a limit to the number of pages that Google will index from one site?	1,152
We sell a software product, and there are 100s of software download directories of the web of varying quality. Could submitting our product to all of them hurt our rankings or domain trust/authority?	1,009
I'm trying to make my site faster, but I noticed that Facebook widgets slowed them down. Should I remove them?	1,082
As Google's algo evolves, is it better to have exceptional links and mediocre content, or exceptional content and mediocre links?	1,257
As far as big brands go, why is it that they seem to do well regardless of relevance, content or links when analyzing keyword placement in search engine results pages?	1,133

Question

Views

I keep a "blogroll" page with links to all my friends' blogs on my blog. Will that affect my blog's reputation in Google?

1,181

Is it OK to sell links as long as we use the nofollow attribute?

1,091

If you have a lot of blog content for a new section of a site (100+ pages), is it best to release it over a period of time, or is it fine to just unleash 100 pages?

1,118

How can a website compete for high rankings using only white hat techniques in industries that are dominated by spammers if Google takes months to react to spam reports and by that time new black hat sites are ranking?

1,315

Do tag clouds help or hinder SEO?

1,455