Head Of Google’s Web Spam Team Matt Cutts Is Going On Leave

Google’s Matt Cutts – who holds the title of “distinguished engineer” — is taking a break from his duties as Google’s chief web spam fighter. Cutts has announced on his personal blog that he’s taking leave through October.
It will be the longest break Cutts has ever taken from Google since he started with the company back in 2000 and since he began overseeing the web spam team in 2004. It’s also one that he writes is overdue. From his post:

When I joined Google, my wife and I agreed that I would work for 4-5 years, and then she’d get to see more of me. I talked about this as recently as last month and as early as 2006. And now, almost fifteen years later I’d like to be there for my wife more. I know she’d like me to be around more too, and not just physically present while my mind is still on work.

Google Hits Poland Again With Link Network Penalties

Four months after Google’s first link network penalty in Poland, Google has targeted an additional two Polish link networks this morning.
Google’s Karolina Kruszynska, a spam fighter, posted on Twitter that the most recent wide spread manual action targeted two link networks in Poland:

 Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed this as well on Twitter after Bartosz Góralewicz showed evidence on of massive manual actions being sent out in Poland. Bartosz posted a screen shot of manual actions received by webmasters over this link network slap:

Former Googler: Links That Change Are Trusted Less By Google’s Algorithms

A former member of the Google search quality and web spam team, Pedro Dias, said publicly on Twitter yesterday that “Google is less likely to trust a link once it has changed from the first time it was seen.”
So if you changed the anchor text or URL path of the link, the value and trust of that link will be less than it was before you made any changes.

Is This True?

Google Notifying Publishers For Right To Be Forgotten Removals

Now that Google has been removing results from the European versions of Google in response to the EU’s Right To Be Forgotten requirements, many webmasters are now receiving notifications of these removals.
Last night, around 10 p.m. EST, I received a notification for a site I have verified Webmaster Tools access from. The notice read:

Notice of removal from Google Search We regret to inform you that we are no longer able to show the following pages from your website in response to certain searches on European versions of Google:
[example URL(s) go here]
For more information, see https://www.google.com/policies/faq/?hl=en

Here is a picture:

I am not the only one who received this notice. 

Other webmasters have shown examples of notices they received

Google Webmaster Tools Beta International Targeting Reports

Google is currently beta testing a new international targeting report within Google Webmaster Tools.
The new International Targeting report is designed to help webmasters who have international sites and use href lang markup understand common mistakes and learn what errors they need to fix, in order to better communicate the language settings across the webmaster’s internationalized web site. The tool offers debug details on missing return links from specific language codes, to unknown language codes in general.
Here are some screen shots of the beta tool that was shown by Google during their SEO hangout last night.

Google On Mobile Redirection: Use 302 Redirects

A couple weeks ago, Google has vastly improved their site move documentation, while also updating their mobile smartphone documentation.
Alistair Lattimore posted on Google+ asking why the documentation for smartphone guidelines specifically recommends using 302 redirects over 301 redirects? 301s have always been the recommended path for SEO purposes because they pass the best link equity from URL A to URL B.
But no, Google specifically wrote a 302 in the documentation on purpose:

Screen Shot Of Google’s New Rejection Notices For Reconsideration Requests

At SMX Advanced last week, Google’s head of search quality, Matt Cutts, announced that they will be revising their reconsideration requests rejection notices with more detailed responses in some cases.
We’ve now located an example of the new rejection notices, as shared with me on Twitter.
The new notice has a new section at the bottom titled “A note from your reviewer.” Then the Google reviewer was able to give specific advice that, at least in this case, would be extremely helpful to the webmaster with the manual action.

The MetaFilter Google Update Is In Process Says Google's Matt Cutts

As you may remember, MetaFilter got nailed by an unconfirmed update on November 17, 2012 that Google denied.
Google has now confirmed that update, 1.5 years later. Not only that, Google's Matt Cutts said on Twitter, in response to  story on IBL Web Solutions that they are working on updating that unconfirmed update from 1.5 years ago.
Specifically, MetaFilter doesn't have to make any changes to their site, but when Google releases the update in the next few weeks or so, MetaFilter will see an increase in referrals from Google.

The update from November 17, 2012 seemed to have had a major impact on many forum-like web sites. Google wouldn't talk about it then, but now, they are talking.
I suspect any of you hit on that date, will want to follow to see when the MetaFilter update (naming it that) is released and see if you are also released from that unconfirmed update.
Google's Matt Cutts will not give us more details on that update.
Another side note: When Google does not confirm updates, it clearly doesn't mean there was no update. So I will keep reporting unconfirmed Google updates - just in case years later Google confirms them.