Google News, Inside.

Matt Cutts Loses a Bet

So is this really news worthy? Probably not, make that definitely not.
But this is something fun that is happening at Google :)
Let’s watch Matt Cutts get his hair cut as was the result of him losing a bet with the Google Webspam Team.

Matt Cutts Explains How Robots.txt Actually Works

Here is a great explanation of how robots.txt actually works.
A secret tip that I’ve learned through a few SEO sessions with some ex-Googlers, is to use the Noindex: tag.
It looks like this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /contactus
Noindex: /contactus
By doing this, you both disallow the crawler from crawling the page and you also disallow the engine from indexing the [...]

[video] Are Different Types of Sites Treated Differently?

The question at hand is whether blogs vs. e-commerce sites are treated differently.
Here’s Matt Cutts on the lowdown of how Google treats different types of sites.
PS, I’m posting this from 30,000 feet in the air courtesy of Delta Airlines :)

Matt Cutts -Does- Respond to Email

As a rebuttal against my previous article, written nearly two years ago, Matt Cutts indeed, does respond to email.

Looking back, it must have just been a time where he was too busy. Of course we all go through those times, and that’s just part of life.
I wanted to follow-up this post to say thank [...]

Links in the Footer May be Treated Differently

Matt Cutts recently published this video talking about how links in the footer may be treated differently than links in-paragraph.

More Google Spam

Spam in the Google index is a constant battle that Google is fighting. It is such a huge problem, that they have an entire team dedicated to just dealing with spam.
Google does a great job of fighting spam, but alas, they’re still not perfect — nor will they ever be, sadly.
Here’s some of the [...]

How Fresh is Your Content?

Matt Cutts in the video below, describes how Google [and googlebot] determines freshness of content.
As a short recap of the video, dates on-page and in the URL are not indicators to googlebot of how fresh your content is, but rather it’s based on both the first time that googlebot visits your page and how often [...]

India’s SearchMasters 2009 Round-up

Here’s a short video with Matt Cutts and Adam Lasnik about SearchMasters 2009 in India.

Has Google Changed to Mold to Social Media?

Matt Cutts provides a great video clip explaining how Google is handling the rush of social media sites and content in the past 6 months.

Hanging out with Google Around Town

Google likes bring around everyone and meeting people face to face. You certainly will not see Larry Page or Sergey Brin hanging out at these conferences, but you will certainly see Google employees.
I was talking with one Googler here at SXSW who is a UX (user experience) designer out of Google New York, and [...]

Blogger Joins Twitter

Recently, Google’s blogging platform, Blogger, joined the Twitter micro-blogging-craze. There’s been rave after rave about Twitter; Twitter-this, Twitter-that.
Blogger finally joined Twitter.

“We will be posting status updates, major feature announcements, and pointers to cool uses of Blogger will all show up in our Twitter account.”
There are already other well-known Googlers on Twitter though, such [...]

When Spammers are too Smart [for themselves]

Matt Cutts wrote a comment on his post about “fun e-mails” and thought he actually made a point which even funnier than his original post.
As many have said, a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this instance, a screen shot is worth a million.

If you’ve ever run a forum, blog, or a site [...]

Google Doesn’t Hate ALL Paid Links, Just Yours

Yet another post about paid links. I know, I know, will the madness ever stop? No way! Why would we want to not have something to talk about?
Today’s topic is paid links, search rankings, and sitelinks.
I’ve known about these paid links for a long time and so has Google I’m sure. In this [...]

Matt Cutts and Sex Sites

Alright, so the title is a little misleading, but check out this interview of Matt Cutts for the Google Webmaster Germany blog.
The title is not completely irrelevant because Matt talks about his early exposure to the family safe filter, filtering out the porn, but Matt diggs digs into search and the future of search.

Video Highlights
How [...]

Google Listens #2: Google Gmail Contacts

Case number two of when Google listens to the public. Which, I have to say, is pretty pathetic that this is only second case I’ve written about where Google has listened to the public and made a change. Look at Flock, for example, they listen, listen, listen, then change, change, change.
Enough about that [...]

The Gmail Team Can Hear You

Sometimes it’s extremely hard for a big company to hear listen to the everyday users, more commonly known as the little people or better yet, you and me.
But alas, Google has a team the really listens well. The GMail Teams listens, then it responds.
Among the other hundreds, if not thousands, of support pages available [...]

Join the Google Webmaster Team this Friday!

Adam Lasnik has extended an invitation for anyone with “…a phone (we’ll pay for the call), a sufficiently-modern web browser, and an internet connection…” to join the Webmaster Central group for a phone conference.
This will be a great opportunity for people that may have felt unheard, to finally get their voice heard. I know [...]

Google Patents: Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data

A few days ago, Google was granted a patent (#7,346,839) that will allow the association of documents based on historical data.
Here are the inventors noted for the patent,

Acharya, Anurag (Campbell, CA, US)
Cutts, Matt (Mountain View, CA, US)
Dean, Jeffrey (Palo Alto, CA, US)
Haahr, Paul (San Francisco, CA, US)
Henzinger, Monika (Lausanne, CH)
Hoelzle, Urs (Palo Alto, CA, US)
Lawrence, [...]

SES NY 2008 Wraps Up – Good Networking, Good Conversations

SES NY 2008 has been a lot of fun. It’s been exciting to see old faces that only make it out to the conferences and it was good to get back into the party groove with everyone.
Tracing back to Monday night with the Live.com Webmaster Dinner, where Ani hosted the event, I was able [...]

Matt Cutts on Gmail Feature Requests

Matt Cutts has thrown out the net for requests of what people are looking for feature-wise in Gmail.
I put in my request last year for Gmail Templates, I really hope they move forward with it.
Maybe this is how Google gets some of their best features (for free), they just ask us.

Google Supports iPhone Unlocking

I have discussed Google and Apple’s mutual love for each other already, but this one comes as, well, only a little bit of a surprise. The surprise comes in the form of an AdWords advertisement I noticed in my Gmail.

Apple has already come outrightly and stated that they will fight the unlocking and discontinue any support for those people that do unlock their iPhones. But Google is more than happy to take advertiser’s money in lieu of Apple’s position?

ALT Tags Presentation by Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts put out a video about ALT tags in images. It’s an elementary concept that he explains, but a good presentation for those who are uninformed of ALT tags.

XML + XSLT = Good SEO? Let’s Find Out

Here is the thread that I created in the Google Group of Crawling and Indexing. I’m hoping Matt Cutts or Adam Lasnik will be able to touch on the subject a bit. We have a few sites that rely heavily upon SEO. We also have a lot of sites on our server, so we want to minimize load time and maximize efficiency. With those key components in mind,

[Myth Buster] Virtual Host vs. Dedicated IPs

There have been long debates about whether virtual hosts or dedicated IPs are the same, better, different, or whatever you want to call it.
Barry’s gathered some more evidence that it doesn’t matter. Do whatever you want to do. Google, in this case, will treat any outbound link as the same.
Matt Cutts touched on this subject over a year ago.
“I’m happy to affirm that this statement which was true in 2003 is still true now. Links to virtually hosted domains are treated the same as links to domains on dedicated IP addresses.”
More recently, another affirmation coming from Google Groups.
“Lots of sites are hosted on shared IPs. If this had a negative effect on ranking, it would harm most of the sites on the web–and that’s not good for small webmasters or for our users. So, understandably, sharing an IP should not have an effect your ability to rank.”
Which does indeed make sense.

I got a PR8 linkback for $20,000!!!

Well, honestly, I can get a PR8 linkback for $20,000. As I was browsing around the web early yesterday, I realized that Apache.org had a sponsorship page. After digging a little bit further, I found out some more details about these sponsorships. Platinum Sponsorship Donation level: $100k / year Your logo (max size: 250×125) on our ASF Thanks page with link Logo Location: top section

Google.cat

We can thank Phillipp for reporting this one. Google now owns Google.cat. Here is a little background on the extension. “On September 16th 2006 ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) approved the .CAT domain. The .cat TLD (Top Level Domain) is established to serve the needs of the Catalan Linguistic and Cultural Community on the Internet.” Here’s a particular favorite of mine though. LOL.cat (in memory of Matt Cutts) Here are some of the details about LOL.cat, Domain ID: REG-D126549 Domain Name: lol.cat Domain Name ACE: lol.cat Domain Language: Registrar ID: R-2001 (Nominalia) Created On: 2007-06-11 15:27:02 GMT Last Updated On: 2007-10-31 22:52:48 GMT Expiration Date: 2008-06-12 19:08:15 GMT Status: ok Registrant ID: NPALHE3545-EURO Registrant Name: Pac Man Registrant Organization: Pac Man Registrant Street: 1111 road Registrant City: hollywood Registrant State/Province: ca Registrant Postal Code: 90069 Registrant Country: US Registrant Phone: +162.69093100

Does Google Trust You?

Google [T]rust is a hot item recently. So the question begs itself, “Does Google trust you?” I certainly feel that Google does trust Ginside.com, and here’s why. 15 minutes. Now that’s fresh. A quick way to figure out if Google trusts you is to do a search for your domain listings, such as site:ginside.com, and then selecting the time frame (24 hours.) Here is what it looks like for Ginside.com. That will output all listings that Google has indexed in the past 24 hours for this site. That, my dear, is one minty fresh index.

Matt Cutts Doesn’t Respond to E-mail Anymore

So there have still been some things on my mind about paid links and that whole situation. I thought, “what better way to get some answers then to e-mail Matt directly for some feedback.” I was completely mistaken when I thought, for even a second, that I would get a real response.
I just received [...]

SES 2007: Are Paid Links Evil?

Session Panelists
Matt Cutts – with Google
Michael Gray
Todd Malicoat
Greg Boser
Andy Baio – with Upcoming.org

This session was the highlight of the conference for me. I believe there are valid points both ways; pro-paid links and anti-paid links.
As just about anyone knows, Matt Cutts represented Google and his stance is that paid links are evil. Why does he feel this way? Matt brings up points about Google that they can’t condone or encourage paid links — and in fact hates paid links — because it manipulates the search and doesn’t provide natural search results, such as what Google really wants.
He gave his normal arguments for his side, as he started the session.

Google Dance 2007 – It was Hot!

Just have to say, this party was hot. Drinks, food, the campus, everything — the Googleplex was amazing. Here are some pic updates… [photopress:IMG_0075.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:IMG_0077.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:IMG_0081.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:IMG_0082.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:IMG_0084.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:IMG_0085.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:IMG_0087.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:IMG_0088.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:IMG_0089.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:IMG_0090.jpg,thumb,pp_image] I will be posting more about some of the sessions later this week. I have some great insight I hope I can provide on the “Are Paid Links Evil?” sessions that was hosted by Matt Cutts, Michael Gray, and Greg Boser, just to name a few. SES has been amazing so far and I’m really looking forward to going back soon!

Google Webmaster Message Center

A little excerpt from Matt Cutts, Remember when we had to pause emailing webmasters because someone was trying to spoof emails and pretending to be emailing from Google? As part of the latest security push from Google, they have now released a frontend interface that will let Google communicate with webmasters in an official manner. Now you can officially receive messages about your site(s) so that there’s not even a bit of confusion about whether the message is actually from Google or not. Google Webmaster Help Center – what is the message center?

WordCamp 2007 – July 21 & 22

This 2-day conference will cost you a whole whoppin’ $25 to get into. There are a few items I feel are important to highlight for the 2-day conference. Matt Cutts on Whitehat Wordpress SEO Liz Danzico touching on Wordpress Usability Analysis Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg will present the State of the Word address to the state world. So sad I’ll have to miss this conference. Maybe I’ll get to make it another year. I will however, be at SES San Jose next month at the TLA booth. I’ll make more updates about this, but plan ahead and make sure to stop by!

On Paid Links

Something that was mentioned last week at SES NY was Paid Link advertising. Matt Cutts wrote up an article on the matter. So what actually is happening with paid links? Google is ‘asking’ that people report sites that are either buying or selling links in order to start to clear up the index. I happen to completely and whole-heartily disagree with this move by Google. Normally

Online Advertising Turns to Google

As the buzz goes around, eMarketer has all the latest. Google’s US ad revenue growth rate in 2006 will soar almost 65% over last year’s. Yahoo! still shows a respectable 17.5% growth rate, an increase that would satisfy most companies. But not one competing against Google. Just a year ago, Google and Yahoo! both posted US ad revenues of more than $2.4 billion. For the full year 2006, though,

Interview With Matt Cutts

Need I say more? Here’s the link. http://battellemedia.com/archives/002917.php

Verifying GoogleBot As Real

Matt Cutts writes, not on this own blog for this one, but on the Webmaster Central blog, about how to verify GoogleBot as real. I actually disagree with the method they are attempting to use as solution for one reason: it will put high stress and load-time issues on the server and GoogleBot. I haven’t tested this to be sure, but I am speaking hypothetically. With

Do You Want to Be Like Matt Cutts? Now You Can!

Google has opened up a position to basically be the interaction between webmasters and themselves. Here’s a brief overview of the profile… Responsibilities: Monitor webmaster issues (in various online forums, conferences, internal questions, etc.). Analyze data for trends. Formulate recommendations. Route issues using appropriate escalation paths. Investigate specific issues, as needed. Full Profile