Google's Matt Cutts: What To Expect In The Coming Months

[engine]

Google's Matt Cutts does a roundup of what webmasters and SEOs can expect in the coming months.

Here's the video.

[HuskyPup]

What's with the Firefox t-shirt, can't they afford Chrome ones?

[chrisv1963]

What's with the Firefox t-shirt, can't they afford Chrome ones?

He's promoting the best browser. Next time he'll probably wear a Bing t-shirt.

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

Well, I'm sure he'll get a bunch of blow-back as usual, but I thought that was one of the more informative videos I've seen as far as the things they're thinking about and looking at from a "these are the areas we think are important right now and would like to improve/focus on perspective", so if GG still happens to stop by here occasionally I personally think the video was great and appreciate the overview of things "on your plate" from over there.

+1

[n00b1]

I quite enjoyed this video. And it does sound like some interesting things are being developed. I really do hope Google gets better at determining quality and the kind of things users actually like and want to see and gets better at demoting 'cheap tactics'. We'll see.

[tedster]

< moved from another location >

Matt Cutts posted a rare overview of Google's plans for the next few months for orgnic search - what website optimizers and webmasters can expect. What to expect in SEO in the coming months [mattcutts.com]

Key targets:

1. Stop advertorials that pass PageRank
2. Improve SERPs that are traditionally more spammy (adult, for example)
3. Better link analysis to deny value to link spammer
4. New hacked site detection methods and better webmaster communication about them
5. Detect true authorities better in various niches - better authority signals that could help moderate Panda impact
6. Improvements planned for host clustering - to make overly dominant results less common

Matt said this is a rough snapshot of the potential that's in the works. It's not a guaranteed promise because things can always change as these projects evolve.

[edited by: tedster at 8:54 pm (utc) on May 13, 2013]

[purplekitty]

Huh. What I heard was blah, blah, blah, keep building quality sites that bring people back over and over again, blah, blah, blah. So...like I've been doing.

We'll see if my problem is that my two sites look like a link farm, that I have some type of algo penalty because of it, and that adding nofollow reverses said assumed penalty when Penguin 2.0 comes out.

[chrisv1963]

Detect true authorities better in various niches - better authority signals that could help moderate Panda impact

It sounds like it's about time to buy myself into some Google+ circles.

[thms]

I was expecting Penguin 2.0 in the next few weeks, now it's in a few months? End of summer? Why post this kind of information so early?

[Leosghost]

Why post this kind of information so early?

FUD..keeps webmasters in line..doing what one wishes them to do..

[somecat]

I've been working on my site everyday for the past 3-4 months updating the css and adding new features that our site visitors have been asking for. I actually surprised myself just how much I could accomplish if I put in 12-14 hours a day into this site.
For the first time since 2002 or so I'm being rewarded with lover ranking and losing 60 percent of google traffic.

I always thought that if I deliver to the user rather than google, the SE's will reflect that and that was the case for a very long time. Never had any problems with other updates, actually benefited since I only concentrate on long term, white hat stuff.

I understand that google is trying to fight spam and make things better but I see the opposite so far in my neck of the woods.

Of course this might be just noise associated with the current update and things will settle down down the road, we'll see...

[taberstruths]

The two things I heard between the lines.

Better link analysis because everyone gave us all the spammy link providers with the disavow tool.

Better detection of niche authority with G+ profiles.

[lucy24]

Some of youse may remember

Q. Do you find the idea of "wife-swapping" distasteful?
A. I find the question distasteful.

This analogy may not work with everyone.

Doesn't anyone else find it creepy that people are even asking what a search engine is planning to do "in the coming months"? Or that the search engine takes it for granted people will want to know?

[Leosghost]

^^^Like :)

[somecat]

Better link analysis because everyone gave us all the spammy link providers with the disavow tool.

If that was the case it would make it real easy to hurt your competition.

Better detection of niche authority with G+ profiles.

No one is using G+ where I sit so if I make a profile somehow I become an authority? Makes no sense...

[somecat]

Doesn't anyone else find it creepy that people are even asking what a search engine is planning to do "in the coming months"?

I find the answer distasteful... ie we might do this or that but things could change and we might not do this or that...

Whats the point?

What little they do offer in these videos is still better then nothing I guess.

[austtr]

I was hoping to see some comment by MC that clarified what the owners of sites impacted by the original Penguin, and who have done a shedload of remedial work, can expect when Penguin 2 rolls around.

Will Penguin 2 just further tighten the focus on spam detection in certain areas or will it also be a trigger that allows repaired sites back into the game?

[Whitey]

Detect true authorities better in various niches - better authority signals that could help moderate Panda impact

Matt speaks specifically about seeking to find small / medium niche sites as authorities. He spoke of specific niche's like medical and travel, plus a few more.

(Q) What is the next big update everyone will be talking about in 2013?

(A) It is weird because we never know what people will complain about... But there is a new Penguin update, big one, coming...

(Q) Duane, do you plan on any penguin/panda updates?

(A) We take a different approach to this. It is less noticeable when we release them because we test them. A diss at Google? [seroundtable.com...]
Some of Google's strategies kinda reinforces the perception that it is less considerate of the consequences to the webmaster and small / medium business community when introducing changes.

[brinked]

If you're closely monitoring what google is doing then you're probably doing it wrong.

It is so easy to get wrapped up in panda's and penguins etc etc. There is just too much going on at google it is impossible to understand what is going on. If you get hurt you get hurt. How many times have you seen a true definite answer on these or any webmaster forum? How many times has there bing a Eureka moment? Think about that...I mean really really think about it.

Traditional SEO is gone...no longer do you have to worry about a ton of links, a bunch of on site "seo" factors. That no longer matters. SEO is different today than it was 3 - 5 years ago.

You keep hearing Matt Cutts mention "great content". What makes content great? Google can not read your websites articles and make an assessment if an article is useful or high quality.

What you need to do is make your site stand out. What makes your site better than your close competition? What are you giving your readers that your competition is not? Do you have references to back up your data (yes you can actually link out to your sources, stop being so damn scared of linking out to other sites in fear of lost PR etc)?

Are you transparent in who you are? What kind of support do you offer your visitors if you are selling something? Can you easily be reached via phone? Is there a support system in place? Is your site secure? These are all things that go into googles algorithm today. Think of the word "trust". How trustworthy is your content and how do we know you're not just making stuff up to appear unique?

Do not try to fool google, those days are done. Be a REAL business. Be a real professional in your industry. Think about how you can be unique instead of how you can buy natural looking links and fool your way to the top, those days are gone. Move on, adapt.


There are no answers in Matts videos, I have been there. Dont wait for google to roll back their algorithms or make a change that turns your life around. Go out there and make a real site for real users that can really benefit from it.

I get at least a PM a week from people on here all asking if I can have a look at their site. 95% of them have blatant mistakes all over their sites. Just because you rewrote some article or because you wrote some article that passes copyscape does not give you the right to rank high in google. Get over your "unique articles" and think about the bigger picture.

</ramble>

[gouri]

Messages spliced

You keep hearing Matt Cutts mention "great content". What makes content great? Google can not read your websites articles and make an assessment if an article is useful or high quality.

@brinked,

Thanks for posting,

I had a question: How is the quality of content determined?

If search engines cannot read the content on a web page, how is the caliber of it determined? If you have written a page that visitors are finding helpful, how are the rankings of key phrases that the page can rank for determined?
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:47 am (utc) on May 14, 2013]
[edit reason] messages spliced [/edit]

[Zivush]

I had a question: How is the quality of content determined?

You have probably heard about page performance factors:
- The time people spend on the page.
- Are they scrolling down the page and whether they continue reading other pages on the site?
- Did they visit the page/site later?
- Have they bookmarked it, copy, download or print staff? etc etc.
- All of this and many more is compared and measured.
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:48 am (utc) on May 14, 2013]
[edit reason] spliced with earlier posts [/edit]

[Robert Charlton]

Mod's note: Please let's keep this discussion on topic. I've removed several off-topic posts from this thread and moved them to a new thread in Google Business issues...

Google - Organic results vs ads and Google's other properties
http://www.webmasterworld.com/goog/4573975.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Regarding the focus of this forum, see this thread: IMPORTANT - The Focus of This Forum [webmasterworld.com], pinned to the top of the Google SEO Forum index page.

[rowtc2]

It says they will tweak Panda so some sites that are at the limit (gray zone, not x% sure or collateral damage) could escape.

It says site authorities will be slightly advantaged than now, they are already in top. For small players remains Facebook,G+ or Adwords to get visibility (and chance to natural links).

For small players, these often traffic changes can be daunting, without a medium-term perspective it is easier to abandon earlier. Since 2011 is really hard to make a plan for your site, longer than 1 month.

[ColourOfSpring]

I get a little disappointed whenever Matt comes out with the "write great content" mantra. We already know that purely from a conversions points of view, and we also know that there seems to be almost zero correlation between great content and ranking well in Google. Google are simply failing at detecting quality content and are relying on the "proxy" to quality content which is quality links. I believe this is a very poor proxy. These can be gamed, and also without savvy marketing skills (some could argue this is "gaming" links anyway), they're also almost impossible to come by in 2013 where few people really link out freely. I also believe Google know it's not the signal it used to be - hence their myriad of updates to punish off-page signals. Google are wrestling with their algo's historical reliance on links - every change they make is a reaction to this historical reliance. There will be no revolution in thinking at Google while they keep reacting and tinkering to a 90s method of evaluation that is way past its sell by date. If you don't think Google are so reliant on links these days, why are SERPs full of spam? Because Google rely on links way too much. Also if you don't believe Google rely on links so much, why does Penguin exist?

However, maybe that will actually change with Penguin 2.0. Maybe this update dials down the importance of links (COULD be the case as Matt has made a bold prediction that there'll be a lot less spam in the SERPs this summer). I certainly hope so. As a webmaster, here's what I want to do: I simply want to look after my sites, and my visitors to my sites. The only off-page marketing I want to do is quite literally engage directly with my potential market via specialist forums (MUCH more engagement than the big social networks), and also let my customers do the word of mouth (which they do). I don't want to carry out non-sensical "means to an end" activities like setting up a Google+ account or pinning images to Pinterest because it's the flavour-of-the-month platform and dilute my energy across several social network platforms. I just want to "specialise" on my sites and devote my time to them.

[tedster]

I get a little disappointed whenever Matt comes out with the "write great content" mantra.

And yet, can you really blame him when so many people think all it takes are things like forum links? The message is not really getting through to lots of so-called "SEOs" and they are hurting both themselves and their clients.

[purplekitty]

Would someone please explain what you're seeing with regards to G+ that makes you think Google is designating websites as authority or helping with ranking or whatever alleged boost is being talked about?

Google are simply failing at detecting quality content and are relying on the "proxy" to quality content which is quality links.

Truthfully, I never did understand this. The vast majority of my website users (like practically all of them) do not have websites of their own. In fact, many of them are pretty uninformed about the Internet in general. They come to my site, either download a pdf or print the page, and that's it. I'm constantly tweaking my navigation because I get feedback on a regular basis from people having trouble finding what they want.

Social media has really taken off, though. It's easier now more than ever to share in those ways for the average website user.

I'm sure there are some industries where backlinks make sense to rate a website for quality, but I don't see it for most things people are looking for.

[chrisv1963]

I get a little disappointed whenever Matt comes out with the "write great content" mantra.

I agree 100%. If great content is so important, why do I keep finding websites with auto generated content that doesn't make sense at all? They do rank above me with my photos though!

Why do I keep finding hundreds of web pages with only one photo (stolen from my website), about 5 words of text and 3 ads. Of course, again ranking above me. At the same time the original photo and the original long descriptive text doesn't rank at all; probably because of that "great" Panda algo!

[netmeg]

Google can't detect great content (to any degree of accuracy) All they can detect is reaction to great content.

[Rosalind]

4. New hacked site detection methods and better webmaster communication about them

This is very welcome. I've come across a few recently, and it's apparent to me that the sites are hacked because I've been looking at them with NoScript, but the webmasters and most other users aren't aware of a ton of hidden spammy links at the top of their pages, usually to really off-topic spam.

[ColourOfSpring]

And yet, can you really blame him when so many people think all it takes are things like forum links? The message is not really getting through to lots of so-called "SEOs" and they are hurting both themselves and their clients.

tedster, I know what you're saying but the Google algo should back his advice up, and if it can't, why offer the advice?

Truthfully, I never did understand this. The vast majority of my website users (like practically all of them) do not have websites of their own. In fact, many of them are pretty uninformed about the Internet in general. They come to my site, either download a pdf or print the page, and that's it. I'm constantly tweaking my navigation because I get feedback on a regular basis from people having trouble finding what they want.

It's a similar story to me, purplekitty. I've got good communication with my market - know them well, what they want etc. I'm never going to be seen "algorithmically" as an authority as I don't win many links like an SEO pundit site would though - so everything that's good about my business, Google cannot measure or detect. My content isn't really why people come to my sites. It's the products and services that they want. So in a way, the content is just the window-dressing - it's just the brochure. The website content isn't the product and it isn't the service. It describes them. I know what I'm saying here sounds so simple, but that's often the case with product / service providers - the website is just the "brochure". Yes it's vital to make that "brochure" as usable and as accessible as possible (have recently made my sites responsive design for example), but it's just a means to an end for most sites (not the end itself).

Google can't detect great content (to any degree of accuracy) All they can detect is reaction to great content.

True netmeg - but they cannot really detect if the reaction is real or fake (and I count fake being manufactured buzz via marketing).