Mercury News Interviews Matt Cutts - "Panda update working as intended"

[tristanperry]

Q How well is the new algorithm working, in Google's view?

A This change was designed to surface higher-quality content. We've heard from many publishers who are grateful, because their traffic has gone up after this most recent algorithmic update. I got an email from a user, and she said, "A couple months ago, I was searching for information about pediatric multiple sclerosis, and previously, low-quality sites were ranking above government sites." And she said, "I searched recently, and the government sites were ranking first." And that's the kind of feedback we like to hear from our users, and we've been hearing very positive feedback.

- [mercurynews.com...]

[asabbia]

the funny thing is they penalized some otehr content farms (smaller) with maybe better contnets than ehow...

and see what? ehow gained!

Do you think the rumored IPO could have been a factor for this? xD

[ascensions]

You know what you tell a dying patient right before they die? - "Everything is going to be alright...."

[Content_ed]

I think people forget that Matt isn't a search quality guy, he's an eliminate spam guy. He doesn't know or care about good results, he just wants to avoid spammy results. In that sense, ranking government sites and even eHow highly makes sense.

It does confirm what I've thought all along. Google is happy about Panda because they don't care about the utility of search results, they care about the appearance of search results. It's just a beauty contest that in place of the talent competition give big points for brand recognition.

[supercyberbob]

Folks at Gooble drinking way too much Gooble Kool-Aid.

The Panda update is a HUGE success, but it hasn't been rolled out globally. mmkay.

[ascensions]

I bet Bill Gates built a time machine to go back in time and drop all the Google engineers on their heads when they were babies.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

If that man, Mr Cutts, ever makes the slightest mistake in the words he chooses many would have a field day gaming the search engine. Thankfully Google has chosen wisely, he's got the right stuff for his position. Great interview, thanks for the link.

[indyank]

We've heard from many publishers who are grateful, because their traffic has gone up after this most recent algorithmic update

Yes. Kudos to you matt cutts. Now we know who those greatful publishers are...good luck to you for your fight against spam.

You now have all the "useful content" that you wanted to present to searchers on e-how, as you have eliminated some content which is not of any use (to google) - There I completed the sentence.

[chrisv1963]

We've heard from many publishers who are grateful, because their traffic has gone up after this most recent algorithmic update

What a stupid statement ...
If traffic goes up for one website, then it goes down somewhere else. Especially for eHow, the greatest content farm ever, it has been going up.

[crobb305]

We've heard from many publishers who are grateful, because their traffic has gone up after this most recent algorithmic update

Yeah, he didn't mention the ~3,000 negative posts on GWC Panda Forum. And I am still dismayed by the vote of confidence they received because government pages were ranking highest for a medical query, and of all things "pediatric multiple sclerosis." Sorry, but the government isn't the authority in medical research. I'm sure there are excellent private-sector doctors, universities, professors, nonprofit awareness campaigns and fund raisers, etc, who are writing about this topic. Government sites? Ugh.

[Jon_King]

>>I am appalled by the kinds of sites I see giving medical advice, and content farms are among the worse.

I could not agree more. Before running in a half-marathon this morning I checked on the idea of taking ibruprophen before starting. The results left me more uncertain than ever... the info seemed to lack credibility, no citations at all. For sure the top medical sites like Mayo Clinic and similar were no where to be found.

It was a waste of time.

[vordmeister]

It's good feedback. Don't knock Matt Cutts - he puts a lot of effort into helping us.

Helping me especially. I've always been annoyed by their geolocation. I've got a co.uk and after they changed the rules in 2009 it is nowhere to be seen in the USA even though the information is very relevant to US visitors.

I'm planning to put a copy of the site on a .com which I will host in the USA registered with a US postal address. To avoid duplicate content I'm planning to rewrite completely, and with eHow still being listed I've got an idea of exactly how little time I can spend on the rewrite - it can be completely dumbed down - much less effort. Also I have an idea about how many more adds I can put on it. I can't get as bad as them because I've got actual content to start with, but I will have a bash at it. I'll let you know how I get on.

Brilliant - keep them coming Google.

[chrisv1963]

I could not agree more. Before running in a half-marathon this morning I checked on the idea of taking ibruprophen before starting. The results left me more uncertain than ever... the info seemed to lack credibility, no citations at all. For sure the top medical sites like Mayo Clinic and similar were no where to be found.

It was a waste of time.

I guess you didn't search for "how to take ibruprophen" or "when to take ibruprophen"
Guess who shows up first ... eHow! Plenty of "higher-quality" content.
With this interview Matt Cutts lost his credibility with me.

[indyank]

...it's interesting to see how the weakest link in many cases can remain fooling an individual person.

What he really meant by that?

[crobb305]

It's good feedback. Don't knock Matt Cutts - he puts a lot of effort into helping us.

Yeah, I'm not happy with this interview, and in particular his excitement about the government sites ranking well for medical research; but, I'd have to say that I am very appreciative of Matt. Despite my criticisms of Panda, I think MC is a very genuine guy and he has worked hard for years to bridge the communication gap between webmasters and Google. Bing doesn't do that. I think Matt knows that our criticisms aren't about him. He loves what he does and it shows, and we're all happy to have him doing it.

One thing that's important to remember is that with Google, penalties don't last forever. Do you guys remember the old Yahoo blacklist (c. 2001-2006)? Once you were on it, you could never get off. All it took was a single manual review and someone deeming your site unworthy because of an affiliate link. Back in 2001 or 2002 when it began, we weren't talking about "blackhat" issues. Yahoo just hated affiliate links. Their reviewers were taught to look for them, irrespective of the content on the rest of the site. Well, Google gives us all a fair chance, and penalties don't last forever. Take the clues and run with them.

Ok that's my pep talk for the day. lol.

[indyank]

and penalties don't last forever

but they aren't calling this a penalty.It is algorithmic and unless they change their algorithm or you change something (which many have not figured out yet) to match their algorithms, you cannot come out of this.

Let us hope that he is genuine and we should hope that.But what did he mean by this?

...it's interesting to see how the weakest link in many cases can remain fooling an individual person.

[crobb305]

but they aren't calling this a penalty.It is algorithmic and unless they change their algorithm or you change something (which many have not figured out yet) to match their algorithms, you cannot come out this.

You're right, I was using the term "penalty" in a general sense. Panda was an algorithmic action that acts like a penalty. I believe that at some point in time, the sites are going to be deep crawled and re-evaluated (content, links, etc), and they will be given an opportunity to rebound. I just can't see anything being written in stone with Google. It has never been that way.

[edited by: crobb305 at 5:59 pm (utc) on Apr 10, 2011]

[TheMadScientist]

He's talking about spammers targeting people (individual site owners), so my guess is, he means the weakest link (being software that's not updated) remains and those people who think they are safe with the software they have installed are fooled into becoming spammers...

[indyank]

Ok...thanks TMS...that really is an interesting remark then....

[zoltan]

Has anyone asked publicly MC or someone at Google why is eHow ranking on the top for virtually any "how to..." related term? What is that makes the algo "think" they are the best match for that term?

[crobb305]

Has anyone asked publicly MC or someone at Google why is eHow ranking on the top for virtually any "how to..." related term? What is that makes the algo "think" they are the best match for that term?

how to predict the weather - ehow is top 3. On a topic that has to do with complex scientific theory, numerical modeling and prediction, etc, E-how is the best choice. Not university research, not the NWS, not private sector atmospheric scientists, nope... it's E-how. And I'm pretty sure they copied the article.

[edited by: crobb305 at 6:30 pm (utc) on Apr 10, 2011]

[chrisv1963]

Has anyone asked publicly MC or someone at Google why is eHow ranking on the top for virtually any "how to..." related term? What is that makes the algo "think" they are the best match for that term?

Ehow ranking for almost anything is a SERIOUS credibility problem for Google.

[crobb305]

I see Wikihow ranking very well also and their traffic for the past few months has followed the same upward trend as Ehow. The two sites are very similar...are they owned by the same company? Like Ehow, Wikihow also nofollows all their links. Both put resources the end of each article, but they don't call them "Resources," they call them "Sources" or "Citations" or "References." I point this out because I have wondered if the word "Resources" has been overly used with paid links. Both run Adsense.

[edited by: crobb305 at 6:37 pm (utc) on Apr 10, 2011]

[chrisv1963]

"how to predict the future"
"how to fly an airplane"
"how to Become President of the United States"
.... one place ... eHow ... and Google loves it.

[crobb305]

"how to pick your nose"

[tristanperry]

The how to become President one is pretty bad.

Not as bad as Wisegeek's 'How Do I Care for a Rose Breasted Cockatoo?' though (looking at the page, it looks as though they have increased the nubmer of ads per page since Panda..)

[onepointone]

People here have been talking about getting rid of their thin or shallow content?

These 2 sites have taken the shallow or thin content idea and really gone the opposite direction.

The beauty is there's never going to be a shortage of content ideas when you can get #1 ranking on diverse subjects such as:

How To Dance, Choose an Airplane Propeller, Speak Latin.

[crobb305]

another element I notice on E-how is that they have comments at the bottom of their articles (Facebook comments). Albeit spammy comments like, "hey check out this website" (much like the kind of commentary seen in Yahoo Answers), the UGC exists and is another sign, to me, that it is being valued more by Google.

Also, their Facebook "likes" are enormous. I see one article with 95,000+ likes. There must be a connection between their social graph and the algorithm (again, heavily slanted toward socializing the web).

[jinxed]

@crobb305

The 95k likes are for their main eHow fan page, not an individual page.

[crobb305]

@crobb305

The 95k likes are for their main eHow fan page, not an individual page.

Ah, you're right. I had two windows open, toggling between the two. That's still a high number for a main page, and even the article pages -- some have more than 500 likes. I've only looked at a small sample.

[jinxed]

I think 500 'likes' for the comedy value is very achievable!