Matt Cutts Video Transcript on '301 Redirects'

M.Harris from New York asks: "does anchor text carry through all 301 redirects? Will there be a penalty for sites that do this as their only way of link building?"

Typically anchor text does flow through a 301 redirect. We do not promise the site will always happen.

So the question is does it carry through all? Not necessarily. We reserve the right to score not only links but the trust for links and also the trust that we have for redirects.

I can tell you that if you're so old method of link building is trying to get 301 redirects that is going to be pretty conspicuous. Because, we log all of the redirects that we receive just like we log all of the links that we receive. And so if all of your incoming anchor text is through 301 redirects that is going to appear pretty strange. Especially because whenever we go looking through our tools that would be a pretty abnormal thing to do.

So my advice is make a great site that attracts links naturally because it uses a fantastic resource and don't worry about "ah should I try to get some page ranked or get some anchor text in some way that search engines might not be able to catch or that other people might not be able to follow"... because if you give organic long terms sort of links that are given freely because you have a great resource and those are the links that typically last and have the most impact.

Matt Cutts Transcript on 'Will Google find Text in Images Someday?'

[A person from Brazil asks] "will Google find text in images someday?"

Boy, that would be a really big undertaking,

I think it would be fun!

Now we have joked around the pool table about wouldn't it be great if we could crawl the web and all the images and run OCR on all the images on the web, that really would be a lot of work.

I think it would be a fun idea but I am not sure that you should count on that in the short term from Google.

Matt Cutts Video Transcription on 'Twitter or Google?'

The following is an accurate transcription of Matt Cutts video answer to the question pertaining to what is better? Twitter or Google?






Here is a fun speculative question from Martino in Trento Italy. They asked which search media does return the most reliable information? Google? Or twitter?

No, don't go hatin' on Twitter and making people bust heads. Twitter has many many good uses. It is great for breaking real-time news; it is fantastic for asking your friends.

And at Google on the other hand we try to return reputable very reliable information. So if you are sorting by date or twitter is fantastic. If you want an answer to a question that's been around for a while, Google is great for that. And you know try both for different situations. If you might not have as many friends then you might not be able to get the questions you have answered on Twitter. And I wouldn't be surprised if spammers eventually see traffic on twitter and they are like ha ha Ha... because if you are only sorting by day then any new fad that comes along spammers might try to jump on that. So they are different they are good for different things. I would say use whatever works best for you.

What Effect Do Load Times Have on Google Rankings?

The following is an accurate transcription of Matt Cutts video answer to: 'What effects do load times have on Google rankings?'


Last time everybody complained that they were seeing the same red polo shirt for like 30 or to 40 days so I actually brought a bunch of different shirts and we will just sprinkle it up.


A question from Depache asks:
"what effect do load times have on Google rankings?"

The short answer is none right now. Now let us give a little more color.

Of course if a site takes so long to load that we cannot even fetch it... that Google bot cannot even get a copy of it then that will have an effect on your rankings because your site is essentially timing out. So if your site is taking 20 or 30 seconds to respond to requests that could be a problem.

But if you are site takes one second versus two seconds that has no difference what so ever on Googlies rankings.

So that is the short answer.

Now let us give that little more color.

If you have not heard Larry Page has said what he wants the web to be. He wants the web to be fast.

Almost as fast as a magazine..

Like, as soon as you can turn a page you are ready for the next page. And so chrome was built with that philosophy. To make the web really fast make it a really great experience.

So currently site time loads have known effect on Google's rankings. What might happen in the future I don't know. I can only imagine Google saying they would like the web to be faster so what can we do to encourage people to make their sites faster.? And how can we get the word out that if you make your site faster people will be happier and come back to your site and use your site more often.

We have seen that on our own site.

So it is interesting that we want the web to be fast and we want sites to load quickly but right now it is not a fact or in our rankings. In the future who knows what might be involved?

Personally I think it is a great idea to find ways to make your site a little bit faster. So for an example don't include 40 different JavaScript files. You can compress them down into one JavaScript or one CSS file. And, don't include huge images when your image size is only set to something tiny. There are lots of ways that you can make your pages load faster for users. You can gzip pages for example. And that is really good for user experiences. Don't worry about search engine rankings perspective for now but it probably can make a real difference for your users.

Is Google doing away with meta-descriptions?

The following in an accurate transcription of the Matt Cutts video answer to the question: Is Google doing away with meta-descriptions?

Is Google doing away with meta-descriptions?

We have a good question from Quentin from Vancouver who asks "in the search results Google will often display a snippet of answers appropriate to the search query often disregarding the meta-description. Is Google doing away with meta- description? Like they did for meta- keywords?

All right Quentin, let me lay a little bit of schooling on you.

So it actually turns out that we would not use the meta-description at all... we would normally use the snippet appropriate to the specific search . And, only in recent years have we added where, if you have a meta-description you will sometimes choose that meta- description and over a little snippet from within the page.

And now, we are more likely to sometimes use the meta-description. But we don't use it all the time. If we think it is useful for that query.

Don't make the same meta- description on every single page... dressed as a cookie-cutter because then we sort of think that is not a very useful meta-description.

So it is not that we are doing away with the meta-description, do we now, that we did say, seven or eight years ago.

But, at the same time we think it has to be useful before we use the meta-description. So the best thing you can do is make a really useful meta-description. And that way you are more likely to see that rather than a snippet from the page.

Now if you don't want to bother that's completely fine too. We'll just try to do whatever we think is the smartest and the best for users.

And hopefully new users will click through and find your content.

Matt Cutts Transcript on the Intro of Google's Friend Connect in Austin Texas

The following in an accurate transcript of the video presentation Matt gave in Austin Texas, in 2009 on the subject of introducing Google's Friend Connect.



Before your eyes start to glaze over...you might say, 'I know an API is an application programming interface, but I'm a little fuzzy about "Google Friend Connect." What does it mean?

Let me walk you through it.

[Pointing to diagram on the screen]. This is my blog. And you can tell why I am not an artist and a computer scientist. [Laughter] this is what every WordPress post in the world. Looks like. Right?

You write some content... whenever you have the common form. You get the name, e-mail, web address. And, you can fill in the form with a comment.

I do not know how many times I have typed my name in the address of my blog... like, it's in my muscle memory now. Right? And yet I have to type this over and over again.

"Google Friend Connect" makes this a little bit better. With "Google Friend Connect" -- -- until today, what you do is. You can copy and paste 15 lines of JavaScript, and you can have widgets on your site -- -- and it makes your site more social. So, if you didn't already have comments. You could put comments on the right here where people can talk to each other -- -- and what "Google Friend Connect" is supposed to do is to sort of awaken the social community, that is already there on your site and make it more effective.

But, it is still not there yet. Because I've already got a comment form on my blog. I don't need an extra little widget -- -- some JavaScript thing over here on the right.

So what "Google Friend Connect" API lets you do is integrate any social network with your Google account or Yahoo account or your AOL Instant Messenger account and you can use those to leave comments directly on your blog.

Now the nice thing is that it is not just WordPress, it can be any system. This is an API so anybody can write their functionality -- -- as a user and why would this be helpful.

I made a list of how many usernames and passwords I have. You have your forums right? How many usernames and passwords do you guys have? It's a lot!! I had over fifty! And I don't know what that says about me. Maybe I am hanging around the Internet too much. But I don't want to remember fifty different usernames and passwords. If Michael Andenbar says something and I wish to comment up I have to go and register at his site and it is really kind of annoying. I just think oh my annoyance threshold is too high. I am not going to bother to go and register on this site just to leave one small comment.

So it makes it much easier to leave comments. And it's not just blogs right? This is an API so for example web master world can implement this if they wanted to, and then you could use a Yahoo account or a Google account to leave comments on Webmaster world.

It is also completely open. So you can use any kind of mechanism... as far as I am concerned you can use your Google account, your Yahoo account, I don't care. I just don't want this anonymous stand this drive by junk polluting the web as much.

Now, a lot of people say they are run their own websites.... they have their own forum..., I was just talking to one person who is going to rule out message boards in 11 languages... you know how would this be helpful to you?

Well, for one thing, it is easier to leave a comment. More people are going to leave comments. And if your name is associated with the comment you leave, or if there is a picture of you, you are not going to be as much of a jerk. Right? Has anybody ever seen the comments on YouTube? It is like 14 year old kids trying to flame each other. It gets kind of annoying.

If the kids had a picture there and their name was in front of them, they might not be quite as rude. So, you get more content. That means you can get indexed in the search engines and get more impressions.

In addition he'll get a lot of flexibility. You can do widgets, like I mentioned, the new API lets you do all this in JavaScript and then you can also do it on the server side if you are interested.

So I was looking through Google moderator and this person asked this question "if you were S. E. O. and you were a link building what would you do a year ago?" I know exactly what I would do right now which is... you guys have a head start which no one else does. The three engineers on my team worked on proof of concept plug-ins. So we have as of today open source plug-ins for WordPress, Drupal , and PHP DB. Now, all of the people, all of the guys who wrote these plug-ins had never written a plug-in for WordPress, Drupal, or PHP DB before. So, what kind of quality content plug-in do you think it is? It is not going to be perfect. It is going to be a proof of concept.

If you guys have ever written a plug-in for any content management system where you'll know it better than we do you could probably do it better than we do. But let me show you what they look like right now.

Anybody have a WordPress blog? So you know what it looks like. You have the comment your name, your e-mail your website... this is what you will see that is new... the sign in button.

The sign in button -- -- with Google Friend Connect there is a sign in button -- -- you click that -- -- it takes you to a pop-up and the pop-ups says do you want to join this site? One click that is all it takes. If you are signed in one click. If you are not signed in then you have to give your password whatever but if you are signed in all you have to do is say join this site.

Then it takes you back to a WordPress. You are signed in, you see a picture -- -- you don't have to worry about filling out your name and your e-mail and your website anymore and you can leave a comment. "Hey everyone in Austin!" He'll hit submit and that's what you see.

Now, your avatar, your picture is there, you don't have to worry about your identity... it's like [Matt snaps his fingers] three seconds!
And you and can leave anywhere that this plugin is installed on a blog.

Let me offer you just one more example. Drupal. Anybody have a Drupal site? [Audience member "Drupal rocks!"]

So Drupal has this standard sort of thing, I will just show you a few screenshots do have signed up, you have already signed in,... you leave a comment and room it is right there on Drupal.

Now, if you think Drupal rocks you could probably write a better plug-in then we have.

Let me show you one more example. PHPBB Same thing as always except down at the bottom Google friend connect says join this site. So you start to see anywhere you can participate... it can be a blog, it can be a forum, it can be anything you want. You have the ability to add this and you don't have to use your Google account you can use any account.

Now the interesting thing about this is we do not wish to maintain these plug-ins. We are not the best plug-in developers. We do not want to handle support, so these are rough but they are completely open source. If you think you can do better... please do better! Please take these plug-ins and improve on them! And here is the key.

You will get a ton of links right? Think about when site maps launched... the people who wrote site map plug-ins... you know things to publish these 'site maps?'... those things get a ton of links because everybody is like "yeah yeah here is a really good site map plug-in so download it. So if you guys are interested in a really great way to get links this is a good way to do it.

Now, I mentioned three basic content management systems but there are so many out there right?

If you know E- bulletin? Hey go at it. You could be the first person to write one of these plug-ins. You could make a version of dig, a version of any social site where you can vote sites up and down using your normal account using Yahoo account or open ID account.

And if you are not a programmer, and there are a lot of you out there who are not programmers and that is completely cool you can still document things about what's good or bad about this and so on.

So that is what I wanted to talk about this is so fresh that we don't have the blog post live yet. We will go live within an hour so I will update this presentation and I will make it eventually available on my blog and I will e-mail it to Brett... keep an eye on these sorts of blogs and you will probably see these in blog announcements start to trickle out in the next few hours.

And then let me just finish up by giving you a little bit of thank you to... a lot of people cooperated to make things possible...