Google's Matt Cutts on SEO

Panda. Google vs. Bing. Penguin. Guest blogging. The years of 2011 to 2013 were nothing short of tumultuous for the search industry. And as the voice and face of Google, Matt Cutts felt the wrath of angry webmasters and marketers.

We continue our look back at some of Cutts' blog posts, videos, and thoughts to get a better understanding of where Google's been, which in turn can be a great way to get a feel for where Google (and therefore SEO) is going next.

If you're just joining us, we've been going year by year, highlighting two or three of the biggest splashes he made. This post has been split into three time periods:

2000-2005
2006-2010
2011-2013
From 2011 onward, things should be pretty familiar to most of you. Still, there is much to learn from the past few years.

Matt Cutts in 2011

This was the year of the first Panda update and, let's be honest, it's easier to remember things from 3 years ago that 13. Believe me, in searching for the past stories I knew were out there I was off by as much as a couple years in the events from the early 2000s.

So let's look at the top few things from Cutts in 2011 ...

Rel="author"

This video is a good watch for anyone interested in how Google wanted to treat the authorship tag:

At this stage it wasn't cross-domain but it's alluded to, but more interesting (to me anyways) is when Cutts discusses authors themselves holding a value that will pass to their content on the sites of others (when cross-domain authorship applies). There's also a little slip around the four minute mark where he talks in the present tense about cross-domain authorship (but catches himself quickly).

Authorship is important; I think we all know that. It's interesting to hear what it's intended to do and while we can debate now how authorship value is passing, knowing what it's intended to be can shed light on what Google is likely working toward in their quest to understand individuals and their trustability.

Bing Copying Their Results

Cutts doesn't seem to get angry much (I suppose that's easy enough when you can simply get even), but when rumor spread that Bing may be copying the search results from Google, Google ran a test and confirmed it and Cutts blogged about it – well... yeah. I suppose since he couldn't get even with Bing it makes sense that he seemed a little mad.

Before we get into his comments on the subject, let's compare a sample set of search results for gibberish phrases that Google purposely set the results for in their testing:

Share on Google Plus

About mikehoek

I would like to further develop my skills with a company that can offer opportunities for growth and career advancement. My professional experience in SEO,SMO,SEM,PPC,SEM, Internet Marketing, Analytical and software skills in the IT industry especially to excelling the field of Internet Marketing/Search Engine Optimization Technocratic in the organization through my knowledge, skills and my positive attitude.