Day one of our SMX Advanced conference is wrapping up, but before we call it a day … it’s time for an SMX Advanced tradition:
Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam fighting team, in a keynote conversation with our Founding
Editor, Danny Sullivan.
With all of the recent news about Google penalties (eBay, Metafilter, etc.), along with updates to Google’s Panda algorithm and expectations of a Penguin algorithm update, they’ll have plenty to talk about.
The room is already packed (as always) and the keynote conversation is due to get started at about 5:00 pm PT. So we’ll get started then, and when we do, there’s no need to reload this page — just sit back and enjoy as the updates roll in below.
See you in a few moments for our SMX live blog!
- 15 hours agoOur live blogging will begin soon. Stay tuned!
- 15 hours agoMatt and Danny have started by tossing stuffed Hummingbird (dolls, not the real thing) out to the audience. And we're about to get started.
- 15 hours agoMatt points out that we have 600 SEOs stuffed in a 400-SEO sized room. "We're SEO stuffing."
- 15 hours agoBy the way, I'll be using initials. DS = Danny Sullivan. Matt Cutts = MC.
- 15 hours agoDanny and Matt agree that they want to revisit some of the announcements that were made at SMX West a couple months back.
- 15 hours agoMC: Begins by saying another aspect of the PayDay Loan algorithm will be rolled out later this week, possibly as soon as tomorrow.
- 15 hours agoMatt says this version is different than what was announced a couple weeks ago, and will focus on spammy queries, not spammy sites. He mentions casinos, payday loans, etc. as areas that typically have spammy queries. Also says it may impact sites involved in counterfeiting, though that wasn't the specific goal.
- 15 hours agoHere's the recent Payay Loan article:
Official: Google Payday Loan Algorithm 2.0 Launched: Targets "Very Spammy Queries"
Search Engine LandGoogle has confirmed they have released a new algorithm update to their Payday Loan Algorithm update over this weekend. This algorithm specifically targets “very spammy queries” and is unrelated to the Panda or Penguin algorithms. A Google spokesperson told us: Over the weekend we began rolling out a new algorithmic update. The update was neither […] - 15 hours agoDS: What happened to Metafilter?
- 15 hours agoMC: It wasn't Panda. He says it's a quality site in terms of content, but it looks like it hasn't been updated in a long time. It was affected by an algorithmic update, but it wasn't Panda or Penguin.
- 15 hours agoMC: We've been in touch with Matt (Haughey), the Metafilter founder. He was under the impression that Google thought Metafilter was spammy, had spammy links. To the best of my knowledge, we've never sent a notification to any website saying a link on Metafilter is spammy.
- 15 hours agoMC: The person that alerted Metafilter got an email from us about a spammy link, but it wasn't a link from Metafilter. This person changed the email, put Metafilter in as the link source, and emailed Metafilter. (Crowd goes "oooooooooooh!")
- 15 hours agoDS: Time for another announcement?
- 15 hours agoMC: Lot of engineers working on reconsideration requests. Lot of experiments. One was an appeals process, where some would be selected for higher touch processing with your recon. request. That worked well, but we were only doing it for some sites.
- 15 hours agoMC: Now, we're building into our templates, an open text area so an engineer can explain more about the problem. This is an option and won't always be used. This is going out today to a very large site that's been penalized.
- 15 hours agoDS asks what site, but MC won't answer. "You've heard of it."
- 15 hours agoDS: You really messed with people's heads a couple weeks ago when you rolled out Panda 4.0 and Payday 2.o at the same time. It was like a perfect storm and no one knew which update hit them. Why don't you just tell people what hit them?
- 15 hours agoMC: The Payday stuff mostly went out over the weekend and the Panda stuff was supposed to go out Tuesday or Wednesday. But in this particular case it didn't work out that way.
- 15 hours agoDS: Why can't you just tell them in Webmaster Tools?
- 15 hours agoMC: We want to show notices that are actionable. Also, there are more than 500 algorithms. It's fair to ask that we do it for things like Panda or Penguin. But it wouldn't have helped Metafilter, for example.
- 15 hours agoDS: But they are actionable. You know if you've been hit and you can change things to fix them. But why not provide your own weather service about the algorithm?
- 15 hours agoMC: He says we do tryt to send out alerts about the big ones like Panda and Penguin.
- 15 hours agoTime for another announcement: Matt says to keep an eye on webmaster tools for "fetch and render as Googlebot." (I think that's what he called it.)
- 15 hours agoMatt also mentions to look for new tools dealing with robots.txt, more tools to help with moving websites to a new domain, improvement to dealing with hreflang and others.
- 15 hours agoDS: Speaking of bad links, we had a guy email us telling us to remove a link from our own site because it was causing them to not rank well. Turns out it was a comment spam link. The business owner didn't even know. It creates a "link walk of shame." You have to go contact all these places and it a problem for them. But it's also a problem for publishers. Why can't they just disavow these links and not have to bother publishers?
- 15 hours agoMC: I've also gotten link removal requests, and I did remove one recently because they were really nice about it. But we try to do things in a way that doesn't open the door for the spammy characters. (This reply was much more nuanced and I didn't catch it all. My bad.)
- 15 hours agoMatt's basic point was that Danny's idea wouldn't legitimately and adequately punish the spammers.
- 15 hours agoDS: DIdn't you say that we'd get a year's worth of backlink data in webmaster tools? You have an announcement on that?
- 15 hours agoMC: Yeah, but we're working on that.
- 15 hours agoDS: Why not just save all our data forever? You can put a self-driving car on the moon but you can't store our data? (Audience laughs and approves.)
- 15 hours agoDS: Let me shift to something more positive. Says he wanted to write a post saying it would be easier for Google to tell us what links are okay at this point. Is link building dead at this point?
- 15 hours agoMC: No, link building is not dead. There's a lot of mileage left in links. If you look at the overall link graph, a tiny fraction of links are nofollow.
- 14 hours agoDS: I know there's mileage in links, but what about in link building? Mentions Duane Forrester's recent post saying ... if you know you're getting a link, you're doing it wrong.
- 14 hours agoMC: Says he basically agrees with that concept, though it may be going a bit too far. Also calls Bing a "perfectly fine search engine," which prompts lots of reaction.
- 14 hours agoDS: Time for lightning round. Assessing a page without links -- could you go cold-turkey on links?
- 14 hours agoMC: The concept of that video, could you measure a site's reputation and quality without links. That would be tricky.
- 14 hours agoDS: Author rank?
- 14 hours agoMC: I've said the long-term trend is that we will want to reward trusted authors. But in the short-term it's a tricky problem. (Again, hard to follow this exact answer.)
- 14 hours agoDS: What about engagement on a website as ranking factor?
- 14 hours agoMC: I've said before that I'm very skeptical of those signals as a long-term factor.
- 14 hours agoMC: The Google Toolbar used to have happy/sad buttons, and we quickly learned about click rings that spammed it. 75% of the clicks were on the happy button. I'm skeptical because of how easy to spam these signals.
- 14 hours agoDS: Secure sites?
- 14 hours agoMC: Secure sites do not currently get a ranking boost. Whether that changes in the future is a matter that Google would have to decide.
- 14 hours agoDS: Can you revisit the expiration of manual actions?
- 14 hours agoMC: If Google does a manual action, you get notified in webmaster tools. If something's ranking lower because of that, it has an expiration date. Something like hidden text would be for a shorter period. More black hat stuff could go on much longer, potentially years. But even that stuff has an expiration date.