Cyrus Shepard argues that strong brand authority protects sites from Google penalties better than domain authority alone. Sites with high domain authority but weak brand recognition are especially vulnerable. Google may compare brand signals across competing sites when ranking for the same keywords.
Cyrus Shepard says, I would posit that this is only one factor of many when considering Google's HCU, but having a highly visible brand with lots of brand and search volume seems to be a great defense against negative Google actions. And so it shows average domain authority and brand authority of analyzed sites. When your domain authority is super strong but brand authority sucks, that's when you're likely to get hit.
And that's a little interesting to me. I never thought about the ratio, but I can definitely see that because you can build a ton of links, although that's hard. And you may not have a strong brand. I bet you they're comparing branding for other people ranking for similar keywords versus just domain authority and overall brand query.
