"Cutts was using IRS/Wikipedia/NYT as stand-ins for "sources people trust", not "sources of high quality by some magical objective standard that Google decides contra their users"."
It ends up being the same thing. Brand value being an overwhelming factor is precisely what the OP and everybody in this thread was complaining about in their SERPs.
It ends up being the same thing. Brand value being an overwhelming factor is precisely what the OP and everybody in this thread was complaining about in their SERPs.