Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO

Normally I’m not much of a game player. My idea of a good game is Time Pilot: one joystick, one button, and the objective is to shoot everything. Your bullets don’t hurt any good guys, only bad guys, so you can basically descend into a frenzy of carpal-tunnel-inducing button mashing.

This year I got several non-traditional video games for Christmas. One of the games that I’ve really been enjoying is Guitar Hero, a PlayStation 2 game from Harmonix. (Disclosure: The lead programmer of Guitar Hero and I were in grad school together. But don’t take my word for it; other people like it too.)

What’s special about Guitar Hero? First, it comes with neat guitar controller with five colored buttons on the frets. When you see a note come at you on the screen, you push the button for that note. It’s easier than it sounds, at least on the lower levels. On the early levels, the game is easy enough that you can strut around and show off as you play “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones. If you nail certain notes, you gain Star Power, which can let you rack up extra points. To start using your Star Power, just point the guitar toward the sky–the controller has a motion sensor built in.

It’s hard to describe, but the game really pulls you in, especially if you take turns with 3-4 people. A group of us spent most of Christmas Day playing it, which resulted in this:

But my absolute favorite part of the game? It also comes with stickers of flames, stars, etc. Instead of using the stickers on the mini-guitar, I slapped a skull-and-bones sticker on my laptop so it looks totally bad-ass. Unless you’re going through airport security, and then you feel a little sheepish.

I’d definitely recommend Guitar Hero if you play video games. What video games are you enjoying now?

(Yeah yeah, I’m still traveling and not approving new commenters, blah blah.)

(Just a quick post.)

In 2006, I expect Google to pay a lot more attention to spam in other languages, whether it be German, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, or any other language. For example, I have no patience for keyword-stuffed doorway pages that do JavaScript redirects, no matter what the language. Pages like this add very little value to the user:

So automobile.de, when you believe your pages are clean enough to be reincluded in Google, send us a Google reinclusion request. We’ll need to hear about who suggested the SEO idea of JavaScript redirects not only on automobile.de, but on other domains such as http://www.automobile-versicherung.de/ and http://www.automobile-finanzierung.de/ and http://www.automobile-leasing.de/ and http://www.neuwagen-jahreswagen.de/ .

Our quality guidelines have been available in over ten languages for several years, so every SEO should know about Google’s German quality guidelines, our French quality guidelines, our Italian quality guidelines, our Japanese quality guidelines, our Spanish quality guidelines, our Dutch quality guidelines, our Russian quality guidelines, even our Polish quality guidelines.

If you work at a large company that has doorway pages, keyword stuffing, or other tricks against our webmaster quality guidelines in a non-English language, consider this a courtesy notice that Google will paying a lot more attention to spam in other languages in 2006. Please check your site for issues now to avoid any potential problems.

Please don’t misunderstand me as an American who has something against other countries. For example, I love France. I took French for two years in high school. I’ve been to France several times, and I’ve spent a lot of time in the Louvre staring at a beautiful painting of Madame Pasteur. I’ve done chats with French webmasters at Abondance. Heck, my registrar is French (Gandi.net). But we’re going to be stepping up our efforts in other languages, and I won’t shy away from calling out examples of (French, German, UK, whatever) sites that are removed for spam reasons. Search engine users in other countries and languages are just as tired of webspam as American users, and they deserve the best quality that Google can provide.

(Note, I’m still traveling and therefore still not approving new commenters.)

Here are some things which, if you grew up in Kentucky and didn’t travel much as a kid, you may not know:

1. San Diego has hills.
2. San Diego is very very close to Mexico.
3. The Alamo car rental place in San Diego has a large sign that says something like

DO NOT UNDER
ANY CIRCUMSTANCES
TAKE YOUR CAR TO MEXICO.

4. If you tell a car rental person that you’re traveling by yourself, so a compact car is fine because you’re just going to putt putt around a little, you will instead receive the largest vehicle on the lot. For example, I received a Pontiac Montana, which is either an SUV, a minvan, or possibly both. The Pontiac Montana received its name because you could fit a large chunk of Montana in it. If I were going to be in town for longer, we could have an SEO party bus consisting of me, my 6500 square foot vehicle, and all the SEOs who live within a 10 mile radius of San Diego. We could just drive around playing loud music and shouting at people “I see what you’re doing in your <noframes> tag, buddy! Straighten up and fly right!”

Let’s see, what else. The people have been very nice so far. Oh, here’s one I learned just before I flew down:

5. If you think that “La Jolla” would be pronounced “La Jolla” then you, gentle reader, are an doofus who should have taken Spanish in high school instead of French. It’s pronounced “La Hoya.” Here it is in a sentence: “The Georgetown Hoyas played basketball near La Jolla.”

and maybe:

6. Traveling makes me a bit weirder than I already am. Which is probably above-average quirky.

(I’m still opting for sleep instead of approving comments from new folks.)

David Krane is a Google PR (as in Public Relations) star. He mentions that Google Earth for Macs is coming. He also points out that Intel on a Mac is coming too. Wild..

(Reminder: I’m mostly away this week, so if you haven’t been approved to comment on my site before now, it may have to wait until I get back.)

Wow, thanks for all the feedback! I’m clearly going to have to point several Googlers to the comments to say “Look, here’s a good idea” or “This was really annoying to someone.” I’m going to be doing lighter posts this week for a few reasons:

1. I’d love for people to keep adding (constructive) feedback and product suggestions.
2. Work is going to be a little crazy; there’s always a lot to do at the beginning of the year.
3. On Tuesday afternoon, I’m heading to San Diego for some training until the end of the week.

It’s my first time visiting San Diego; anything in particular I should check out? I won’t have much free time, but at least I’ll know about fun things to do in case I make it back there again anytime soon.