Matt Cutts and search quality team - video Hangout from India

[Web_speed]

Hangout from India

Matt Cutts along with several members of the search quality team have a live hangout in Hyderabad, India.

Published 9 July 2012,
[youtube.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

Thanks for this, Web_speed.

Essentially, this is Matt Cutts answering a bunch of Panda algorithm questions, and covering many current questions about various. He addresses, among other things, whether nofollow links can confer SEO benefit, rich snippets, author tag, the page layout algorithm, the duration of penalties and appeals, the mechanics of Panda updates, etc.

It's a 57:16 min video, so I've only watched a small part of it. Will definitely be watching it all.

Note that there is an interactive transcript with the video.

[Web_speed]

At around frame 18:02 he is starting to address "the above the fold ad" penalties and (at around frame 20:00) the reason the same principal does not apply to Google's SERPs.

You are going to love his reply...

[Zivush]

It reminds me science fiction.
They invented a chaotic system type ii and now trying to explain/control it by understanding root causes, conditions, topology or dynamics.
It's mission impossible. Just kidding :-)

[Robert Charlton]

At around frame 18:02 he is starting to address "the above the fold ad" penalties and (at around frame 20:00) the reason the same principal does not apply to Google's SERPs.

The part which gives Google 'permission' to load up on the ads is one of the ultimate bits of rationalization I've ever seen.

That said, the information it gives about how Google is looking at the page layout algo in terms of overall site scoring may be very helpful in understanding how Google is looking at various quality factors in relation to an entire site.

Matt's description feels oversimplified, and I'm not at all clear that the justification is his idea.

[zeus]

He also said duplicated content has nothing to do with panda, that surprised me.

[tedster]

When Matt says something that seems to blatantly contradict what SEOs are saying, I usually perk up my ears. In this case, Matt's statement about duplicate content also has my attention in a big way, because I also had a strong sense that Panda had a lot to do with duplicate content.

I'm going to chew this one over.