Disqus - Latest Comments for Matt Cutts

Re: Before I deal the FUD "Iâ€™m going to ask you to put on your regular user hat"

Matt Cutts — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:45:46 -0000

Hi Andy, I mentioned in both the first and second paragraphs that I was investigating the query "radiosurgery"; My first screenshot also only used that anchortext, so that was the query I was digging into.

In my experience, when a user types a broad query such as "radiosurgery" they typically want overviews, tutorials, and introductions to the topic rather than a) paid posts showing up in the search results, or alternatively b) websites that received links mainly from paid posts.

I did research into the site buying links, but decided not to highlight that site because it was beside the point. But I'm aware of not only braintumortreatment.org but also things like truthaboutradiosurgery.com (which has a lot of duplicate content compared to braintumortreatment.org) that appear to be by the same person. Ultimately when writing the post I decided that running multiple sites with duplicate content was beside the point of the paid link post, so I consciously decided not to talk much about the site receiving paid links in my post.

Re: Before I deal the FUD "Iâ€™m going to ask you to put on your regular user hat"

Matt Cutts — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:45:46 -0000

Re: Before I deal the FUD "Iâ€™m going to ask you to put on your regular user hat"

Matt Cutts — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:46:10 -0000

"Are users also eager to see sponsored link posts ahead of all other results as well?"

Lisa, we do think of ads as a type of search and try to show the most relevant ads we can (not just the ones where the advertiser is willing to pay the most). We also apply relevancy tests on whether to show ads on the top vs. the side, so that we only promote ads from the right-hand side to the top slot if we think that they're very useful.

Re: Before I deal the FUD "Iâ€™m going to ask you to put on your regular user hat"

Matt Cutts — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:46:10 -0000

Re: Google Dictating Nofollow For ALL Links From Compensated Content

Matt Cutts — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 02:46:26 -0000

Hi Andy, I left a comment on Ted's post about my memory of the conversation. You can find it here: http://community.izea.com/blog/2007/12/an-invit...

Re: Google Dictating Nofollow For ALL Links From Compensated Content

Matt Cutts — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 02:46:26 -0000

Hi Andy, I left a comment on Ted's post about my memory of the conversation. You can find it here: http://community.izea.com/blog/2007/12/an-invit...

Re: Google offers SF homeless free voicemail: “Don’t be evil” or smart gimmick?

Matt Cutts — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:49:33 -0000

You might also want to add some context/background links. http://www.cvm.org/ is an interesting site, for example, about community voice mail and how it can help people.

Re: Google Redefines Meaning of Dance

Matt Cutts — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:29:02 -0000

I was there, and much dancing took place.

e.g. http://flickr.com/photos/digantsavalia/1200657914/ http://flickr.com/photos/digitalwizardry/119970... or just search flickr for google dance 2007. :)

P.S. Could you add some info to your "About" page? Right now it says "This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself ..."

Re: New York, New York! (Danny wants better RSS in his SPOT watch)

Matt Cutts — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:20:15 -0000

Hey Robert, where are you going for chow?

Matt Cutts

Re: Bad news gets worse

Matt Cutts — Fri, 12 May 2006 01:18:06 -0000

That's really awful. My thoughts are with you.

Re: Correcting the Record about Microsoft

Matt Cutts — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 11:33:32 -0000

Congrats! I hope you enjoy the new place as much as the old one. And I hope you get a little downtime in the midst of the switch; you deserve it. You'll continue the scobleization of your surroundings wherever you are, and that's a Good Thing.

Re: Where was Google?

Matt Cutts — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 15:53:35 -0000

Fair question. Chris never mentioned getting anyone from Google to Gnomedex to me; maybe I'll drop him an email--I needed to talk to him about something else anyway. I know Nelson Minar always enjoyed talking to folks at Gnomedex, even back when it was in Des Moines:
http://gnomedex3.blogspot.com/2003_07_01_gnomed...

The down side of sending software engineers to conferences (which I think is a great idea, because the discussions can be much more detailed) is that those engineers also have a lot of work/coding to do, so sometimes it's harder for an active engineer to carve out time for conferences.

Re: Where was Google?

Matt Cutts — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 18:38:49 -0000

Hi BillSaysThis, I'm glad that RawSugar got good exposure at Gnomedex this year; it sounds like it was also valuable for the face-to-face time with other smart folks.

I'm just speaking from my experience at Google, which may not be as typical. I've got a regular full-time job, and going to conferences puts me behind on projects and email. So I (reluctantly) have to limit myself to 5-6 conferences a year.

Re: Where was Google?

Matt Cutts — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 16:02:31 -0000

taotakashi, glad you got a Google T-shirt from EuroPython. :) Nathan Weinberg, I personally agree that it would be great to get some more evangelists on board.

Robert, I do think that Google is talking to more people at more conferences than we did in previous years. Participating at places such as SIGIR, the WWW conference, Linux World, Internet Librarian, Infonortics, WebSearchU, SIGIR, EuroPython, Kelsey Group conferences, etc. might not make it on your radar as much. There are a lot of places that Google talks to different folks. You probably don't make it to places such as SIGGRAPH as often as (v)blogger get togethers, for example, but there are also lots of smart people there. And things like the Summer of Code are another great way to meet talented students who will give feedback.

BTW, I'd love to hear about "a year in the life of Scoble"--basically a rundown of which conferences you hit this past year. That would be pretty interesting. Is it more than 20?

P.S. I think "The Dish" would be a great podcast, except everyone would be out of breath for the first 10 minutes as they climbed that first hill. :)

Re: Getting moved to Gmail

Matt Cutts — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 03:34:54 -0000

Let us know how you like Gmail. Once you get used to the keyboard shortcuts, it's really fast. :)

In fact, don't you think you should try a symbolic month of MSFT-free stuff? :) Store everything on the net: calendar, email, etc. Go to Bloglines for your RSS so you're running fewer apps and more webbiness.

Go on, give it a try! :)

Re: Ray Ozzie “optimized” (I just want a new office chair)

Matt Cutts — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 22:54:04 -0000

Okay, processing through the super-secret human expert system at Google.. waiting.. waiting.. (remember this is a complex query) and done.

The right chair for you is the Steelcase 462 Leap series.

Query processed in 18.2 seconds.

Re: Ray Ozzie “optimized” (I just want a new office chair)

Matt Cutts — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 17:18:35 -0000

Robert, yup. Whenever I switch to a new location in Google (which at one point was every 5 months, on average), I drag it with me. I do think you'd like it.

Re: Microsoft fights for its reputation, where’s Apple and Google?

Matt Cutts — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 17:08:10 -0000

Arouw? Did someone ask for me? BTW, I want to apologize in advance that I'll be going to a book sale today instead of hitting nofoo. But bear in mind: just because you don't always see Googlers or Applers (?) where you are doesn't mean that we're not out there getting feedback in our own way. I just cleaned out about 50 private email conversations on this sunny Saturday, for example. :)

Re: Google not serious about Web spam?

Matt Cutts — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 19:24:35 -0000

Speaking as a Googler, I know that Google blocks a lot of spam in our index, from blogspot, from AdSense, and I'm sure from commenting on Blogspot. I think the larger or more well-known the blog host, the most attention that host is going to receive. People spend time to try to spam MySpace or digg more so than Friendster or leetdaily.com or findory. It isn't that Findory isn't great, but they don't have the traffic to attract the attention. Likewise, when Daypop was the ur-Techmeme and was really popular, the spammers tried to target it.

I'm not sure I buy this whole "ecosystem" idea either. The post by Niall that the article links to mentions blog hosting, search results, and advertising. Lots of popular hosts get spammed (e.g. MySpace), lots of popular search engines get scraped (from Google to MSN to technorati), and lots of popular advertising systems get abused (from AdSense to Yahoo Publisher Network to affiliate programs). I think spammers will target anything that they think is worth the effort.

If you don't mind, I'll go try to say something similar at Ian's post. :)

Re: Google not serious about Web spam?

Matt Cutts — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 19:41:32 -0000

Hey, wait a tick! Ian's post is months old (April)--only the link from Doc is new. Since April, the Blogger folks have rolled out a new code base and beta, and I know that they've also worked hard on reducing spam as well. In hindsight, working on that new infrastructure was clearly a good idea, especially since it makes spamfighting easier as well.

Was this just a test of the Scoble Emergency Linkbaiting System (SELS)? ;) I'm gonna stop reading now and go read a book outside. :)

Re: I thought Google was a search company…

Matt Cutts — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:09:49 -0000

I think the blogsearch guys are optimizing for searches like [google apps domain] and less so for backlink queries to news articles with parameters. I'll certainly pass on the feedback.

But if you compare that search to technorati's current results, Google's blogsearch does return more feeds I would have expected/wanted to see (Search Egnine Watch, ResourceShelf from Gary Price of Ask, Anil Dash, Dare, Matt Marshall from siliconbeat, Google Blogoscoped, etc.)

Try it yourself:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=googl...
http://technorati.com/search/google%20apps%20do...

I'm seeing a non-English result from technorati (http://magic3.net/item/965), a lifehacker post (lifehacker is a great source, but not a domain expert necessarily in this instance), a reprinted AP article syndicated to linuxtoday.com--not great. They do have an article by Nick Carr, which I would have wanted in the top 10. So points for returning Carr, but I think Google's blogsearch does quite well on that search.

I'll still pass on the feedback that you want more backlinks though. :)

Re: Bloggers have a double standard when it comes to Google vs. Microsoft?

Matt Cutts — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:24:41 -0000

"There are plenty of bloggers out there who’ll write about you if you send some cash into the system."

You're not proposing that Microsoft send cash into the system to get blogger coverage, are you? ;)

I try to pull away, but you keep pulling me back in any time you talk about Google. :)

Re: Google sticks its toe into enterprise waters (is Google hiding from bloggers?)

Matt Cutts — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:30:53 -0000

I'll just point out that we have a Trusted Tester program that many products at Google use. It's got a lot of regular people in it, and pretty much 100% of those folks respect the privacy that we ask of them.

See e.g. http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-02-20-...
for more info.

Re: Bloggers have a double standard when it comes to Google vs. Microsoft?

Matt Cutts — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:33:39 -0000

Sure. Also, when you stop by Google to rake folks over the coals for missing the mark on enterprise stuff--stop by and say hello. You've got my email to contact me. :)

Re: Trip to Google tomorrow

Matt Cutts — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 04:03:35 -0000

Hey, I did a quick look and posted here:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/scoble-visiting-t...

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!

Re: It’s the small things at Google that impress

Matt Cutts — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:04:20 -0000

David, do you want to do a master blog post pointing to your blog posts where you wanted Google to do something better, and I'll pass that link around within Google? I saw that your site has a Google category and I could pass that on, but it sounds like you might want to make a few specific points..

Re: Listening to Shelley Powers about women in tech

Matt Cutts — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 13:45:15 -0000

Yo, talk to Vanessa Fox of Google's Sitemaps team. She's done great stuff, like a radio show episode with Danny Sullivan called "Everything I needed to learn about SEO, I learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Rooting around.. um.. link here:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006...

Re: ScobleShow post mortem (wow, Ask blog search rocks!)

Matt Cutts — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 01:05:22 -0000

I would vote:
Ze Frank
Danny Sullivan
Jason Calacanis

Re: The suits vs. the geeks

Matt Cutts — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 18:05:53 -0000

Anybody got a pointer to the Become.com study asserting that Become was better at shopping than Google's web search?

Re: The suits vs. the geeks

Matt Cutts — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 16:28:16 -0000

Many thanks, Aram. Interesting results once people selected their own products; I'll have to dig into it more. I wish the research report had the raw ratings.

Re: Gmail team, you out there?

Matt Cutts — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 12:55:02 -0000

I'm on it. (I only have time to check out Scoble on weekends. :)

Re: Gmail team, you out there?

Matt Cutts — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:03:20 -0000

@4, I agree that's a different subject. I submitted your resume in our recruiting system; if the folks that handle hiring didn't think you were a good match, then that's their call.

Looking into this, several people mention both their Gmail and Ebay/Paypal passwords being hacked at the same time. That sounds like phishing or a virus/trojan to me.

Gmail provides the ability to set an alternate/backup email address; see here for how to do that:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?an...

And you can choose a security question (or write your own). If someone doesn't give either a backup email address or a security question, it is a harder issue to investigate whether someone is who they say they are.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Matt Cutts — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 00:59:52 -0000

After reading all the comments, my personal favorite was Bat's: "MS was the first to have algebraic searches."

I can honestly say that in my years at Google, I don't think anyone has asked me for that feature, and I'm a heavy user of the calculator feature. :)

Re: Gmail team, you out there?

Matt Cutts — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 23:40:25 -0000

@41, I completely agree with you. After trying this out myself to see what it would be like if I got hacked, I passed along similar sentiments as feedback.

Kamal Jain, I don't think David's desire for a job at Google is a secret; he's registered http://www.nextgoogleceo.com/
to make his case. I certainly didn't intend to convey anything other than that I'd submitted his resume on his behalf. BTW, if you're a junkie for all things David Dalka, he'll be doing a speech at eComXpo:
http://daviddalka.com/createvalue/2006/10/17/my...

@42, but we should try pretty hard to handle the common cases. Forgetting a password is one, and having an account stolen is another. I personally think Google does pretty well on the former, but could improve on the latter.

Re: Firefox vs. IE 7 (IE7 having trouble with Google sites?)

Matt Cutts — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:21:52 -0000

Thanks for the comment. I replied "Robert, I really couldn't say why IE7 was significantly slower for you on AJAX sites such as Google Reader and Google Maps. If it gets to be too much, you can always switch to FF. :)" in my comments. :)

Re: Firefox vs. IE 7 (IE7 having trouble with Google sites?)

Matt Cutts — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:29:37 -0000

Dan G, have you tried IE7 on other stuff like Zimbra or other Web2.0/AJAX sites (new Yahoo Mail)? How does it work for sites like that?

Re: Will this little story about Google and CIA gain legs?

Matt Cutts — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 02:57:16 -0000

Robert, I'm not Google PR, but you can read my take on this here:
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/9612

Look for the comment beginning with 'Okay, let's practice the old skill that I like to call "consider the source."'

Suffice it to say that I've had the opportunity to check out two previous claims by this prisonplanet source and found both of the previous claims to be baseless. See my comments on that thread if you want to learn more.

Re: Will this little story about Google and CIA gain legs?

Matt Cutts — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 22:22:54 -0000

Karel, Google has given an official comment on the CIA allegations to John Battelle at http://battellemedia.com/archives/003051.php

The official quote is "The statements related to Google are completely untrue." Very little ambiguity there, yes?

Karel, you also said "The fact that they [Google] have kept quiet about it, and have not said anything about the claims spacewar and prisonplanet are making shows that they probably can’t say anything else."

Please re-read my comment in @13. I responded directly to the spacewar and other prisonplanet claims at http://www.threadwatch.org/node/9612 recently and at http://www.threadwatch.org/node/5981 months ago.

Re: Google says CIA thing is untrue

Matt Cutts — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 22:24:21 -0000

Guys, the official answer from Google was the first several words in Battelle's story at http://battellemedia.com/archives/003051.php

"The statements related to Google are completely untrue."

That's the official word from Google: a flat denial.

Re: Demo of the Year: Photosynth

Matt Cutts — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 21:41:42 -0000

I'm surprised you didn't check out the demo in July when they showed Photosynth at SIGGRAPH--that was months ago..

Re: MySQL Camp is at Google in Mountain View tomorrow

Matt Cutts — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 21:46:49 -0000

http://xooglers.blogspot.com/2005/12/lets-get-r...
discusses some of the ways that Google has benefited from MySQL. There are lots of ways to get the performance you want from MySQL in my experience.

Re: Can Google please fix my search?

Matt Cutts — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:22:16 -0000

It's because you left your old website dangling with more links than you'd believe pointing to the old site. Plus Google hasn't done any manual hand-coding for this search.

Typically when you move sites, you should do a permanent (301) redirect to the new location. Just ask Matt Mullenweg to fix you up with a permanent redirect.

I read Stéphane Rodriguez's post, but that post has nothing to do with speed. It's true that Google shows different results for different languages and countries. That's intended, and it's a good idea. The query [football] in google.com is not the same as in google.co.uk, and that's as it should be.

Re: Can Google please fix my search?

Matt Cutts — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:43:09 -0000

Stephane, I understand your points from @36. I do believe that many people expect google.fr to show different results from google.com. And it's true that we don't provide visual cues that we're doing different things based on someone's IP address, or the language/country that they selected to search. On the other hand, if we provided visual cues for everything that Google does, our search results page would be very cluttered and busy. :) Instead, we usually choose to try to return good results given what we know from the query, and to keep the output simple. I don't think many (any?) other search engines tell all the factors that change how they return their results, nor do they include messages such as "You are visiting from an IP address in France; you will get different search results." Or at least, I'm not aware of any other engines doing that. :)

As far as the argument that we should recognize and combine Scoble's old site and his new site, I understand the thought that we should recognize that one is a newer site and return that. However, bear in mind that there are several other people in the world with the name Matt Cutts, for example. If we were to combine two sites that were really owned by different people, that mistake would be much worse. That's why we tend to leave it in the hands of site owners to use a permanent (301) redirect.

I realize that isn't the optimal solution for e.g. people who moved from a freehost to their own domain, because most freehosts make it hard to do a permanent (301) redirect. That's partly why we've started giving site owners the ability to indicate their preferred domain in our webmaster console. It's not perfect (right now a site owner can indicate whether they like their site with or without the "www"), but it's a step in the right direction.

Of course, even allowing site owners to combine two sites won't work if the site owner has no control over one of their sites any more--which it sounds like is the situation with Robert. At that point, you've reached the situation where someone says "I used to be at this site and I've moved," and Google says "How can you prove that you used to control this site? Can you modify the pages or put a redirect in place?" And if the answer to that is no, that's a dangerous situation, because person A could claim that person B's site is really theirs. That's fundamentally he-said/she-said situation, and most of the time it's not scalable for Google to investigate those situations; the correct answers would be to use a permanent redirect or to be able to prove ownership of the site.

Anyway, now I'm curious. Robert, in this case it's clear that it really was your old site. If you had a choice, would you like search engines to manually combine your old site and your new site? Of course, even that is problematic, since your old posts don't exist on your new site. If someone did a search for text that only existed in an old post (not for the words [Robert Scoble]), would you rather return the post at the old site, or return some 404 page on the new site?

Probably you'd want the post on the old site to come up. So I'm guessing your final pref would be to keep indexing/returning the posts on your old site, but to return your new site for [robert scoble], yes?

Re: Speaking of linking to other people…

Matt Cutts — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 21:15:27 -0000

I like it too.

Re: Weird things I show up for on Google #438

Matt Cutts — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 23:34:44 -0000

I checked the search now and TMZ.com (the site that broke the story, I believe) is #1 now; not sure if it was before. Robert, my guess is that you were an an early poster about this, but I see plenty of good results when I did the search.

Re: J, J, J, K, oh, sorry, TWiT talking about Windows Vista

Matt Cutts — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 23:48:46 -0000

I find myself hitting 'y' on webpages because that's the Gmail shortcut for "I'm done with this thread. (y)ank it out of my inbox and archive it." :)

Re: “Small” PR headache for Google ahead…

Matt Cutts — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 03:30:52 -0000

I posted the apology here:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ie7-promo-page/

I know it would suck to have someone copy your HTML layout on a page that is seen thousands of times a day.

Re: There’s a whole lot of copying going on…Yahoo copies Google

Matt Cutts — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 23:23:21 -0000

Ian, my deeper apology is at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ie7-promo-page/#c...

Re: Google and Technorati blog search rewards sploggers

Matt Cutts — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 14:13:14 -0000

Passed this on one to the blogsearch folks.

Re: Google, the world’s largest startup?

Matt Cutts — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 02:55:56 -0000

The bottom line in my book is that listening to feedback keeps you grounded and lets you know what a lot of people want next. Reading blogs and comments on the web provides a huge amount of prioritization in my book: fix what people complain about.

Sometimes that's not possible. For example, if we provided the Custom Search Engine without any ads, then I'm sure some Google partners would be asking why they pay for search results when CSE could give them results for free. But most of the time, getting the opinion of the blogosphere is the best type of market research--it's like having all the smart people in one room.

P.S. Robert, I'm about to drop you an email about
http://scobleizer.com/2006/12/14/google-and-tec...
The blogsearch team looked into it, and it's because you're pinging us twice: once with a nice RSS 2.0 feed, and once with an older RSS 0.92 feed.

P.P.S. Getting problem reports like the one in the last paragraph also make sure that we know about important stuff quickly and tackle it soon. Thanks for mentioning it.

Re: Technorati/Ask is getting better in splog war than Google is

Matt Cutts — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 03:29:09 -0000

Robert, this may still be due to the RSS 0.92 issue we talked about where your older RSS feed with no links overwrites your nice RSS 2.0 feed. Toni sent me an email, so I'm hoping we can resolve it.

Re: Google Reader, the next “Digg?”

Matt Cutts — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 13:26:28 -0000

francine, see http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2006/03/reader...
for how to get your shared items into a linkroll.

http://persistent.info/archives/2006/03/23/goog...
also talks about it a little more (Mihai is an engineer on Google Reader), and his front page shows an example of it.

Re: 25,000 items read on Google Reader

Matt Cutts — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 12:23:04 -0000

Robert, you've had the largest numbers I've seen reported so far. I tend to follow the strategy of watching the search bloggers who read a lot of feeds themselves. I can't read every search-related post, but if there's an important one, it will normally show up when someone I already read comments on it.

Re: Welcome from Forbes, but…

Matt Cutts — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:22:36 -0000

I say just bask in the love. :) Sure, people made important protocols that we all use, but you've played a large role in the rise of blogging too.

Scoble: The voice of a bloggy generation. :)

Re: Hey Microsoft: look to Krugle for your search woes (at least for your developers)

Matt Cutts — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 12:32:42 -0000

If anyone wants to try writing their own custom search engine (CSE), check out Google's option for that:
http://www.google.com/coop/cse/overview

There's a lot of power under the hood. Every time I've talked to the CSE folks, I've come away really excited about some of the things they're working on.

Re: Mirror mirror on the wall, which blog search is best of them all?

Matt Cutts — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 01:14:22 -0000

There are a lot of ways to compare blog search engines. You could look at which engine returns the most links to a post. You could compare queries to see which engine has the most spam. You could look at which engine returns the most results for some relatively rare phrase like [matt cutts embiggen]. You could look at the speed of indexing individual posts. You could ask which engine had neater features, UI, or flair. You could look at how long each engine takes to return results for a query.

Every person is going to care about slightly different things. Me, I care less about backlinks and more about recall and speed of getting results back, for example. The great thing is that with a lot of engines competing, every engine is working hard and continues to get better. That's better for every user.

My personal advice would be to try several engines and see what you like. Every 2-3 months, try icerocket.com or sphere or t'rati or Google again, just to see which one works best for your search needs.

Re: I’m writing for Fast Company magazine

Matt Cutts — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:59:47 -0000

Congrats, Robert! That's pretty cool.

Also, I want to print this thread out and stick it to the wall of my office at Google. It makes me that happy. :) gwhiz, sarah, and francine hardaway in particular, thanks for making my day.

Re: Appleman raves about Google’s custom search capabilities

Matt Cutts — Fri, 04 May 2007 17:18:22 -0000

"Anyone notice how much faster Google is indexing sites lately? I do."

Robert and Dennis Goedegebuure, let's talk about something else. :) Photowalks, anyone?

Re: Inside the Gears of Google

Matt Cutts — Thu, 31 May 2007 01:29:47 -0000

"I also have multiple computers and am moving away from applications that load on each. The browser approach is better for me."

That hits the nail on the head for me too. Web-based apps are just so much easier to "install" because you just surf to them. I'm excited that I'll be able to feed-read on planes now too.

Re: Google slammed in privacy report…

Matt Cutts — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:32:13 -0000

I waited for a day because I wanted to sleep on this and try to get a little perspective. Here's my post:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/privacy-internati...

(The url path sounds controversial, but that's just because I was angry when I wrote the slug. I softened the title later, but forgot to change the slug.)

Re: Matt Cutts of Google answers Privacy International

Matt Cutts — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:28:14 -0000

Hi Chris! I've written before about my experience working as a co-op student for the NSA in college. See here for example:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/debunking-google-...
I doubt anyone in the government even remembers me working there as a college student 15 years ago, let alone cares about what I say about Google and privacy now. Maybe someone there cares, but it would surprise me.

Re: Google (and other sites) sucks for travelers

Matt Cutts — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:39:53 -0000

Are you in Mexico? If so, go to the bottom of google.com and look for the "Google.com in English" link. Clicking that will remember that you want Google in English, not one of those other languages. :)

Re: Google (and other sites) sucks for travelers

Matt Cutts — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:23:05 -0000

Skip, the Reader team is keeping everyone informed here:
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Labs-Read...
Looks like everyone's feeds should be back, but I know the Reader team will be digging into what happened.

Re: Google Reader losing feeds?

Matt Cutts — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:26:36 -0000

The Reader team has been keeping folks informed here:
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Labs-Read...

Looks like people's feeds should be back by now, but I'm sure the Reader team will be digging into what happened. If anyone wants to backup their OPML file (which is always a good idea), click on Settings->Import/Export in Google Reader.

Re: TechMeme not going for most linked blogs anymore

Matt Cutts — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:07:53 -0000

Robert, what would the ideal version of a "hot stories in the blogosphere" site look like to you?

Whether you start with Techmeme or http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends I'd be curious what you like/don't like and would want in an ideal world.

Re: Google Reader + Facebook Application = Digg killer?

Matt Cutts — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 19:33:33 -0000

Thanks for mentioning this--seeing the top shared stories among Facebook folks running this app is really fun. It's a little between Techmeme and digg.

Re: If only I got $1 for each Google Reader opened…

Matt Cutts — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:22:57 -0000

I'm happy to buy dinner next time. It's still a good deal. :)

Re: Feedburner bad for us?

Matt Cutts — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 23:23:59 -0000

Woohoo, blog pile-on! I'll chime in on the "move your feeds off of Feedburner" issue. Danny is 100% right above; MyBrand is free and every Feedburner user should enable it.

Feedburner's MyBrand feature lets me make a CNAME on mattcutts.com, so the feeds are served by Feedburner, but the location is feeds.mydomain.com, not feeds.feedburner.com. If you ever dislike Feedburner, it goes down, or you want to leave, everything is under your control on your own domain name. And Danny's guide (he put a link in his comment) is the best walkthrough I've seen on how to set up the feature. At WordCamp yesterday, I told everyone that they should use MyBrand.

XML makes my eyes glaze over, so I'll stay out of the
discussion of how RSS might change someday.

Re: Things on my mind…

Matt Cutts — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:56:26 -0000

Where's mah Scoble?

Re: Nice to see Yahoo coming on strong…

Matt Cutts — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:27:46 -0000

(Disclosure: I work at Google.)

Hey Sam, I'm guessing the extra password on Google Analytics is to keep someone from walking up to your computer and looking at site stats. For stuff like that or Web History, it doesn't bother me that Google really wants to make sure it's me.

There are several good ways to get feedback to Google. The webmaster group is one that I know several Googlers read, for example:
http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster...
Several Google blogs also have comments turned on, e.g. the official Google webmaster blog, the Google librarian blog, etc.

Sam, I think we might also have chatted on other posts as well, yes? http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014828.html is one where we were talking about .cn issues. I recently gave an update on that on my blog, e.g.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/still-chugging/#c...
if you're interested..

Re: What would you ask Tim Berners-Lee?

Matt Cutts — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:02:34 -0000

Does Tim believe in the idea of the Semantic Web more, the same, or less than (say) a year or two ago?

Re: Google Reader needs GPC

Matt Cutts — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:12:02 -0000

I'm torn on this, because I can see both sides. No one wants stuff that they considered private or small-circulation sent to a larger (unintended) list.

My main concern is that people (in general -- I'm sure no one reading here) suck at ACLs. That's Access Control Lists, and it's the UNIX-y term for granular privacy controls.

If you've ever used UNIX, you've probably heard stories about people who meant to protect files but left them wide open. ACLs solve permissions problem in theory, but UNIX has a very barebones notion of permissions (you, a group, and everyone else). For the most part, manipulating ACLs isn't fun and generally sucks, plus coming up with the right interface/metaphor for access control isn't easy.

Robert, it looks like you can choose people to receive a limited profile on Facebook. Can you configure more than one limited profile or groups (e.g. family sees one view of my profile, friends see another, and work sees a third view)?

Re: Google Reader needs GPC

Matt Cutts — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:35:54 -0000

If you're interested in this subject, Chrix on the Reader team did a post on the Google Reader blog: http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2007/12/managi...

Re: Could Google Reader team have done a better PR job?

Matt Cutts — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:19:59 -0000

Robert, did you see @7? I'm trapped on a plane, like many people today. Responding well around holidays can be pretty hard.

Re: Microsoft=Success; Google Docs=Fail?

Matt Cutts — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 11:09:07 -0000

I thought about doing all the things Karim said to do. You'd end up with a seriously ugly document. :)

Re: Switching to Gmail…

Matt Cutts — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:06:54 -0000

Congrats on the switch, Robert! I just started trying this technique with Gmail:
http://putthingsoff.com/index.php/inbox-heaven/

Essentially I'm marking to-do items with stars. Everything else either gets a quick archive, or I write the reply and then save it as a draft and send it later.

Re: Switching to Gmail…

Matt Cutts — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:59:05 -0000

David Ward, http://putthingsoff.com/index.php/inbox-heaven/ recommended izymail.com.

Re: I’ve redesigned

Matt Cutts — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:55:09 -0000

Hey, good stuff! I like it.

Re: Commenting on the news

Matt Cutts — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:38:37 -0000

I just wanted to say that I was looking at your shared items page today and I really enjoyed the context that you provided with short comments.

Re: First hour with Google’s new browser

Matt Cutts — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:51:30 -0000

"Unclear compatibility."

Robert, I suspect that we'll see a quick wave of improvements (on both web servers and in Chrome) to fix lots of low-hanging fruit on different websites. But Chrome has been compatible and very robust for me.

Re: Kara says “no Google deal” for Twitter

Matt Cutts — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:03:35 -0000

"He said Google wasn’t buying Twitter as far as he knew"

Just to be clear, I have no inside knowledge on this issue at all. I'm just an engineer at Google. I'm far away from any part of business development, M & A, or any other part of Google that would be involved in deals. I'm practically the last person at Google that would know anything about bizdev deals or partnerships with Twitter or anyone else.

Re: Google Defuses Googlebombs; Does this Change Link Building Practices?

Matt Cutts — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 18:16:33 -0000

Andy, the scope of this change is quite small, so it won't affect many sites at all. DazzlinDonna, we did look for ways to constrain the scope so that no babies would be ejected with the bath water. :)

Re: Google Willing to Share Just a Little More Link Data

Matt Cutts — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:00:20 -0000

I would just give it time; there's already a *lot* more backlinks available now.

Re: Google’s Lasnik Wishes "NoFollow Didn’t Exist"

Matt Cutts — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:02:17 -0000

Looks like Adam already stopped by to clarify. Thanks, Adam. :)

Re: Google Wants You to Disclose the Paid Links it Can’t Find

Matt Cutts — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:25:18 -0000

Ben and Chris, I mentioned in my post that this is partially in response to requests that I heard at SES London. People wanted a way to tell us more about paid links at Google, and using the keyword "paidlink" is an easy way for people to do that. Over the years, we've used tons of different keywords to let people give us feedback on specific issues.

Re: Google Offers Money-Back Guarantee* on 301 Domain Redirecting

Matt Cutts — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:12:13 -0000

It's all part of our "Make Matt superfluous" project, which I happily support. :)

Matt Cutts's last blog post..Two Search Interviews

Re: Microsoft Throwing Ice Cream Cones at Google?

Matt Cutts — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:45:07 -0000

I'd love to hear/see that Eddie Izzard performance. Any idea where I could find it?

Matt Cutts's last blog post..My favorite books of 2008 (so far)

Re: Who’ll Leave Google First? Marissa Mayer or Matt Cutts?

Matt Cutts — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:57:40 -0000

Am I allowed to vote? :)

P.S. Blog Expert, don't be a doof.

Matt Cutts's last blog post..Google Feedback from my Parents

Re: Google Talks Chrome 2.0 and the Delay for Mac/Linux Compatibility

Matt Cutts — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:35:06 -0000

"Google admits that progress is lagging behind."

I haven't see Google say that--would you mind point out a source for that? From my perspective they're moving pretty quickly, given they only announced Chrome at all in September.

Matt Cutts's last blog post..Ideal conference badge

Re: Antitrust Primer: Google and Microsoft

Matt Cutts — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:20:37 -0000

Hey Joe, as Danny mentioned, Sitemaps are definitely not required in any way to be crawled. Google tries very hard to discover and crawl sites completely independently of whether the sites have a Sitemap. Sitemaps are also an open standard at sitemaps (dot) org, so while Google drove a lot of the early momentum, it's not a Google-only effort. I hope that things go well on this site!

Re: Let’s Try This Again: If It’s Not CRYSTAL CLEAR That Something Is An Ad, It’s DECEPTION

Matt Cutts — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 00:05:02 -0000

Hold on, you took my Google ads image and trimmed out the border that separates the search results from the ads.

I agree with you about PPP though. From Google's perspective, paid posts should include machine-readable disclosure in the form of nofollow attributes on paid hyperlinks.

Re: Let’s Try This Again: If It’s Not CRYSTAL CLEAR That Something Is An Ad, It’s DECEPTION

Matt Cutts — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 20:22:32 -0000

Thanks for loading the original image. Besides the border, the original image makes it a little more clear that those ads are over on the right-hand side of the page.

Re: What Gives SEO A Bad Name

Matt Cutts — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 15:27:50 -0000

Hi, don't mind me, I'm just popping in to tell Scott that I saw his post and will ask someone to check out that site. I think we can get this case handled pretty quickly (I'm traveling or else I would have mentioned it to someone even sooner), and I'll ask someone to check out why our algorithms to spot sites like this didn't flag this site. We may be able to improve the underlying algorithm in addition to solving this case, so thanks for mentioning this issue.

Re: RocketGoogle

Matt Cutts — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:52:20 -0000

Good idea. If I move beyond the ultra-lo-fi stuff that I'm doing now, I'd love to be able to switch to video from a desktop computer. Hmmm. I wonder how much stuff like that costs?

Re: RocketGoogle

Matt Cutts — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 15:24:56 -0000

Yeah, but then I couldn't say whatever I want. :)

Re: New Matt Cutts Videos

Matt Cutts — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 11:49:06 -0000

SoSecret, I haven't ever been to sosecret.com. Chris, I didn't intend any rip on Yahoo or MSFT; it just happened to work out that I didn't go to their parties.

Re: Google Categories

Matt Cutts — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:28:42 -0000

Lee Odden, you make a couple good points; we're always trying new approaches and different UIs. In a way-early test, I wouldn't worry that much about which category a particular site was in.

Re: Search Marketing Blogs by RSS Subscribers

Matt Cutts — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:25:56 -0000

Cool idea, Lee. I added my stats to the pile:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/my-feedburner-fee...

Re: Session: Are Paid Links Evil?

Matt Cutts — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:25:23 -0000

I have to say, the Transformers analogy cracked me up. :)

Re: SMX Advanced: You and A With Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:57:18 -0000

Hey Dana, nice summary of the session. SMX turned out to be a lot of fun. :)

Re: http://disqus.com/preview/

Matt Cutts — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:48:50 -0000

Nice

Re: Linkbait at any Cost?

Matt Cutts — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:35:03 -0000

Nice summary, Kimota.

"When it can get you so many backlinks and newspaper coverage, whats wrong with lying a bit?"

Lorm, it's a short-term tactic that burns credibility. In this case, for example, it certainly lowers trust in money.co.uk and Lyndon.