13 replies to this topic

[whelanska]

I've been watching Matt Cutts' videos on Google Video and they're pretty interesting from a nooby (newbie?) SEO perspective. This is all probably old hat to SEO veterans, but definitely worth a watch if you're not familiar with Google-ology.

http://video.google....ch?q=matt cutts

[Nadir]

Yeah, I've watched the first 3 ones. But after Rebecca decided to transcript them, I thought it was an easier and faster way to get "his message". I personnally think his advice were good for both "beginners" but also for veterans.

Edited by Nadir, 03 August 2006 - 03:00 PM.

[joedolson]

Thanks for pointing those out! I've read plenty of what he's written, but hearing it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, has some definite advantages.

[JohnMu]

.... don't get me started ..... :ph34r:

Thanks for the link to seomoz -- I love this quote: "If you can get through the entire site using only a text browser, you're gonna be in pretty good shape." Now I wonder, does Lynx do Google Video?

Edited by softplus, 03 August 2006 - 03:31 PM.

[A.N.Onym]

Yeah, those do provide some insight into something, but they are mostly helpful for beginner SEOs.

Too bad he didn't say anything about contenet above navigation and semantic coding, but we know a lot about that from the patents

[JohnMu]

Matt Cutts' blog is something I like to read, especially the comments. These video postings are something I am really against, everyone on the blog seems to think they're absolutely cool, except for me . Words like usability and accessability seem to be new (or irrelevant?) for him. "Foreigners" (those from "the rest of the world") who have trouble with english, can be ignored (there can't be too many out there). * Sigh *

Rant !

However, the more I work together with new and existing webmasters to get their sites properly indexed and optimally listed, the more I feel this guy is just a joke.

As A.N.Onym said, the "tips and tricks" are more for the new webmasters; too bad they have no clue to go to "Ask Matt", too bad 90% of the readership (as far as I can tell) are pros who are just after the information "best left unsaid" (ie read between the lines).

The real issues are ignored, the real feedback is - it seems! - ignored, the "bugs" remain.... The questions unanswered (because they could end up being used to make spam sites better, oooooh: better?)

Just an example, look at the issue of URLs in Google with a space / tab in front (eg inurl%3A%2520www.) - the webmasters themselves can't do a thing about it, the links from Google do not work (can not work). Perhaps it's only because it effects a few million pages? Come on, how hard can it be to fix that. Looking at the bigger picture, those pages are unimportant, but ask a webmaster who's whole site is indexed like that if he thinks it's unimportant as well -- indexed in Google, but linked in a way that does not work...

Not to mention the things so many other webmasters are fighting with, even seemingly simple things like handling of redirects (301/302) or missing pages (404/403/410) seem to be ignored by Google...

He's probably not in charge of things like that, it seems nobody is in charge of things like that at Google....

The main issue I have is something a bit simpler: He is just about the only Google representative who is out there giving answers and "talking" with people. He's certainly an important figure at Google. But everything he says is prefaced with a disclaimer: "this is unofficial".

We have a black-box search engine, with instructions "play fair", an internal rulebook 1000's of pages long, and the only 1 on 1 communications form is "unofficial"?

Is it really a wonder that newbie and old-timer (amateur) webmasters resort to things like hidden text, link-farms, etc in an effort to get indexed properly? To many of them, there's no way out (or in: to the index, to a proper listing).

In the end, it makes you wonder - is it ignorance? is it the money? is it "I could care less"? is it what Google was founded to do?

John

Edited by softplus, 04 August 2006 - 02:15 AM.

[A.N.Onym]

I don't think that the majority of Matt's readership are pros. There may well be SEO newbies as well, and judging from the comments on any of his posts, it may very well be like 30% newbie 70% pro distribution, maybe 50/50, but not 10/90 for sure.

Frankly speaking, I understand why Matt doesn't do the ultra advanced stuff. If he explains what works and what doesn't at a high level (link patterns, page block-by-block comparison, etc), spammers will catch this up and rip it to pieces, which will add more work to Google engineers. Though it may be great in the long run (it will happen sooner or later, and it'll make the search engine algorithm more bullet-proof), I understand why it is scary to let the cat out of the bag.

Not that it means that he can hide such issues as effect of the web standards on rankings (he didn't mention whether content above navigation is helpful and other CSS related issues in these videos) - he did say that 'they cant just throw the rest 40% of the web out of their index due to invalid code', though.

Though Matt doesn't mention usability and accessibility, I understand why he does not pay attention to them. From the point of view of Googlers, usability and accessibility is another reason to make a site more usable but may as well be irrelevant to the offsite SEO (which they are currently concentrating it seems).

Even if Matt knows that both usability and accessibility can make a site more search engine friendly, I don't think he views them separately from SEO. Quite the contrary - usability just adds up to SEO. That's my guess and it is unofficial

Btw, there are a lot of Googlers' blogs out there (forgot the URL) - he's the only one educating the SEO folk though as far as I know. If it were not for him, Google would be another MS I guess.

[JohnMu]

Ok, perhaps I've let my feeling get the better of me

Let's see if I can concentrate it down a bit...

Perhaps what I really mean is that I would prefer he handle the real issues than to explain the "basics" of SEO (which you can already get all over the web, sure some are junk, but there is a lot of good stuff out there). Perhaps they could get someone else to do it, but I'm sure he is very much overqualified to do that.

There are some real issues out there which need to be solved. I'm sure he can pass it to the appropriate people (after deciding if it is by design or really a problem). Would it not make sense to handle these, give feedback in the blog, etc? I'm thinking of things like redirects, obsolete pages, supplementals, datacenter updates, spam signals, etc..

Another of my main problems with Matt's blog is that it is unofficial. It's one of the main communication forms between the webmasters and Googles natural search - but it's unoffical. Imagine the police instead of Google -- all they say officially is "drive carefully", but internally they have a large rulebook with fines for this and that. The chef of the police blogs unofficially, writing up all sorts of things about what they allow and what they don't. But it's unofficial. But if you break the (unknown) rules, they'll fine you for it.

I don't understand it, I can't imagine the thinking behind it. In my opinion, either he's doing it for the company (officially) or writes about his hobbies (unofficially), but writing about the company, their policies and how they effect other people unofficially is weird. What sense does it make? If we communicate with him it's because of his official know-how (leaving the rest of the blog out for a moment). We want answers and it seems that he has the desire to write something and answer questions; if it's unofficial, can we trust it? I just don't get it. (or is it a legal problem? liabilities?)

I think it all comes down to: the lack of official communications with Google is frustrating. With lots of time, work + money you can work most things out and test them properly (but even that is almost impossible given the rate that they change things); a hobbist doesn't stand a chance. There are too many issues that turn a hobby site into one large spam-signal, leaving the professional spammers to fill the index and the legitimate hobby sites outside.

John

[yannis]

I think it all comes down to: the lack of official communications with Google is frustrating. With lots of time, work + money you can work most things out and test them properly (but even that is almost impossible given the rate that they change things); a hobbist doesn't stand a chance. There are too many issues that turn a hobby site into one large spam-signal, leaving the professional spammers to fill the index and the legitimate hobby sites outside

The lack of official communication from Google is indeed frustrating. A business who has so much influence on the web is indeed very short of reaching out to webmasters. Their guidelines spelled out on a couple of short pages fall very short of what they should be telling people.

Personally I read Matt Cutts blog now and then. I find it a difficult read and the guy is incomprehensible most times. I find Google's results many a time cannot be used for proper research of a topic. The front pages are normally dominated by a couple of strong websites whereas 'gems' can be found on other pages. This is a result of the failure of Computer Science to make a serious break into Artificial Intelligence. Currently all search engines just use metrics to rank their search results. Until AI will enable a search engine to 'understand' what is reading and dish out meaningful results we are condemned to listen to the propaganda rants of the like of Matt Cutts!

In the meantime do a bit of research and reading and a LOT of EXPERIMENTS!

Yannis

[SEOEgghead]

Lots of what Matt says is along the lines of "thank you captain obvious," but every once in awhile he reveals a gem. I summarized it on my blog if anyone is interested. I cut through the beginner stuff and picked out the gems.

Most of the information is diluted, but there are several places where you can read between the lines and draw some conclusions -- like when he changes his mind from SES until now regarding whether launching a whole bunch of pages at the same time ... good stuff.

He also addressed something I wondered about for awhile -- whether A/B testing can make it look like you're spamming. In the past I've advised people to avoid doing A/B testing on a home page. He confirmed my sentiment.

I'm also going through his blog retroactively and doing a post of gems from the past with dates next to them for convenience (in a future post).

I see his blog as an invaluable resource if you're willing to spend time to pick out the good stuff.

[JohnMu]

Do you trust what he says or do you try to get it confirmed (in tests and/or other sources)? How much of what he's saying do you believe is just being said to get people on the wrong track?

If he said it makes sense to put "$" (dollar-signs) in the title, how many would jump and do that? What kind of signal could that trigger at Google, and how would they use it? Wouldn't it make sense to apply a spam-penalty to those sites, since they're obviously just doing it for the rankings and not thinking themselves?

John

[Halfdeck]

Softplus, I strongly doubt Matt is intentionally throwing curve balls in the videos. But seeing that a Google engineer corrected Matt's earlier statement regarding BOLD vs STRONG, obviously even if Matt's trying to be as honest as he can, he can still be wrong. Does that make him a misleading liar? Well, maybe if you're a Democrat.

[A.N.Onym]

Yeah, it is somewhat disheartening to know that an engineer, who has worked for Google for years, has to be corrected about certain things, like strong vs bold and the site launch.

And yes, it is confusing that he blogs how Google works - unofficially and talks about the basic stuff. Really, there are billions of sites, and most of them would get a boost from just doing the basic SEO stuff. That's why he is probably in the basics. It wouldn't hurt to give us pros a couple of answers as well. Hear me, Matt? .

That being said, he is one of the few sources to get the knowledge directly from Google from and I don't think we should be looking in the horses mouth that hard.

Edited by A.N.Onym, 06 August 2006 - 07:32 PM.

[hvacdirect]

Nice rant John! They are trying to communicate with the new newsgroups they set up, except as usual, the real questions are ignored and they only answer the easy ones.