One of my goals for 2009 is that when I do a substantial presentation at a conference, I want to recreate that presentation for the people who couldn’t make it to the conference. As part of that effort, we just did a post on the official webmaster blog with the video and slides from when I spoke at PubCon Las Vegas late last year.
Through the magic of embedding, you can watch the talk here too if you want:
and you can view my slides online or follow along below:
This video runs a bit longer than the in-person presentation did (a little over twenty minutes); if you decide to watch it, feel free to leave it going in the background while you get other things done. You can also get access to this video in high-quality — just click on the triangle near the bottom-right of the screen, and look for the “HQ” option.
{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
Very informative stuff, Matt! Thanks.
I was very amused to see you use an XSS hole in Keyword spy as an example, too!
I have to admit, I LOL’d. for real.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for sharing!
Could you explain the “also searched for” results on Google Trends for Websites please (bottom right)?
I made a comparative search between 2 websites: A creates content and B aggregates it. When I rank by website A, the “also searched for” results present a list of queries including A brand but many of them the colored bars graphs for B are much longer than for A. What does that mean?
Great presentation. There’s really a lot to get excited about there. I can’t believe I’ve never spotted Google Trends before. I can see that being the new “thing that distracts me from work”.
Matt – you need a “Googlestan Flag” as a backdrop
Matt,
Nicely done. The drinking is easier at home with friends than it was at PubCon during your live event.
Actually, I watched the whole thing and it was a great way to receive the 2008 review and 2009 “forecast”.
We think you do a fine job bringing balance to a difficult role.
Matt
I am glad I did not go to PubCon, this was very useful and watched it while having breakfast. Too early to drink here…:) But thanks for the effort. Can you do one on universal search too? or is that pushing it…:)
Noticing an increase in spam and doorway pages, they’ve made their way back and are ranking quite well for competitive terms. As a user I’m quite shocked that they actually stick around for quite a while, and as webmaster I’m really surprised that Google has still yet to remove about a handful of sites that are the main perpetrators of such spam.
looks like you lost some weight from your videos.
question: is there a ‘glitch issue’ with the sktool?
going through
“Or see top keywords across all categories”
Place in any keyword within the word or phrase box, and you’ll have a whole keyword list populate. Some keywords do not come in the search, but will come up when you place a website with a keyword/phrase.
Also, I noticed if you search just the keyword phrase that the monthly searches may change if you put in a website with the keyword phrase.
Not sure why it’s different with/without a website
Great tool either way
Super rad man. Thanks again. Moahahahahaha!
Totally off-topic, but perhaps the following Android app story needs higher-level attention before it becomes a marketing black eye for Google.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?fid=797cfd0d191828c60004633bba544820
Last time I checked, you don’t express regret that someone is gay. Apps that promote negative stereotypes of a class of people should be removed without hesitation.
Thanks, Matt. I was surprised to actually pick up a few tips from that video.
Great of you to post this Matt – I miss going to PubCon but probably won’t make another one for some time.
Thanks Matt!
Some interesting info on what the black hat guys are up to!
Some great tips to pass on to my CMS clients who look after their own sites.
Matt,
Posted a comment yesterday after watching your State of the Index, it didn’t show up, and I don’t know if you bounced it or if the blog glitched.
Seems to me I thanked you for pointing out the 404 script last year, which I adopted, but the main thrust was on cannocalization, which you mention at the end of the video. I use the WebMaster Console cannocalization setting for the basic domain, but I’ve had a long running question about the way Google counts internal site links. I’ve read many places, and perhaps heard from you, that internal links should be either all absolute or all relative in order for Google to credit them properly.
Thanks to an old infrastructure of relative links that I hate to leave, my main site has had a mix since I began using Blogger. Since Blogger posts will archive to different places, I’m stuck using the absoute links for blog posts and for linking back into my static pages from blog posts.
I never understood why Google wouldn’t just treat relative and absolute links the same since they point the same places, and wondered whether this is one of the issues Google is looking to fix in the future, or if I’m missing the boat here and there’s a reason it has to be the way it currently is. For what it’s worth, I’m not aware of any ranking problems due to the mix of links on the site, but it’s hard to prove a negative.
Morris
The Google trends is def. a great little tool to see what people. Great for targeting.
Matt,
You mentioned an “beginning SEO 101 guide” in PDF. Where can someone find this?
Matt,
Thanks for the update. It really helps those of us who didn’t get to attend PubCon to understand Google’s inner workings a little bit better.
I love just about all the new technology you guys are created, and I’m very thankful that you don’t hate SEOs like myself
Keep up the good work!
Cutts Drinking Game:
Drink every time he uses his hands to speak. I was drunk 5 minutes in.
Hey Matt, thanks very much for your presentation.
I like the lighter side of you a bunch better, thanks for taking the time!
Dan
P.S. One question, how do I stop Googlebot from indexing
“.com/?scr=(insert whatever you want)”?
Live and Google are indexing hundreds of my home page urls while Yahoo! completely let loose and penalized me.
I’ve tried redirects and robots.txt exclusions and now the new meta tag and nothing has changed.
Any help would be much appreciated!
Hi there Matt,
Exelent video very helpful!
I was wondering where can we download “SEO for Beginers” manual you where talking about in the video?
Off-topic question…is there any chance in the future that the Docs team could update the presentation app to allow the user to select any slide (she) wants a la Access form record selection? Instead of having to scroll through them, I’d like to be able to type in “15″ and go to slide 15.
Just something that always bugged me about the presentation app, that’s all.
Excellent video. I didn’t find it dry at all actually, dunno if that’s a good sign or bad
Very informative either way, thanks.
Matt, thanks for the video. Nicely done. It is hard to talk for that long without major mistake. If you did it in one shot, your awesome. Want to see the Android.
Matt,once again thanks for posting these video lectures. They are informative and helpful to those who can’t attend conferences. I like your correlation of SEO with preparing a resume. One thing I’d like to hear about is Google Suggest and if it is evolving. It seems like recently when I start to type in some phrases I not only get keyword suggestions, but the actual web address. Is this something that will become more prevalent?
Thanks for the update Matt,
I just wish it wasn’t ten in the morning when I watched this; I would’ve certainly tried the more competitive drink-along way! Maybe next time I’ll get the whole office involved on a Friday night!
Regards,
Nick
Hi Matt,
Matt, I think the best thing for me that Google did last year [2008] was the addition of “Linked From” pages in Google Webmaster tools. I had so much trouble in finding the pages which seemed to have links to the 404 not found pages.
There are many pages that I never found to have a link in my site. I used to see some strange 404 pages.
For example:
If I had a page
matt-cutts.html
In my site, then I may see a list of 404 pages like,
Is-matt-the-for-cutts.html
I used to wonder, where the link for this page is?
After Google made the update, I finally found that, there were many pages in the 404 not found list, which had a link, not from my site. The links to those unknown pages, came from pages on some other sites.
Thank You Google for this edition to Webmaster tools.
Regards
Hey Matt, thanks for the video. Love most of the tools that Google brought in ’08. I have a question regarding black hat SEO.
If there is a Black Hat SEO who pushed a website with methods like hidden links or hidden texts on multiple other websites, is there a way to report many of those websites (the entire link network) at once or do I have to report every single website through the SPAM report?
If there is no such option, it would be nice if you guys would consider this. Thanks
The thing I like best about Matt’s videos is the great tips. Who needs pub-con when Matt will keep us up to date with Google happenings. I won’t be making it this year, so I will just stayed glued to Matt’s blog.
Really cool post Matt, a lot of fly by night SEO’s are still investing a lot of time into directory submission as their primary link generating activity. What is Google’s current position on directory submission? Has there been any further developments into filtering directory links?
Thanks Matt,
Couldn’t make it to Pub-Con this year but I’m very pleased that you posted this video. It was more than just a little bit informative.
Thanks,
Brian
Propools.com
Thank you Matt,
I have been hoping that some of the information from the conferences would make it out on video; I’m grateful for the info and your blog. Thanks for the insight, it is very well received. Cheers
Hey Matt!
A nice video cut!. Google had done some great work in 2008! I think all webmasters around the Globe, really appreciate that, as Google yearly becomes not only more user-friedly, but also (which is very important for us) more webmaster-frienddly, and that is great!
thanks!
Hi Matt, thanks for a very informative video… a nice annual report. I like Google’s direction to make more sense of search queries. Have you and team given any thought of showing a list of most common questions in a given topic? Yahoo Answers is doing things well on this front.
cheers,
Shankar from London
(not the London, Kentucky!)
Indeed, nice clip. I agree with with most of these comments. We need more videos from you and for those that can’t afford to attend a pubcon event this is perfect.
Keep up the hard work.
Very good video – it was informative and likeable. I didn’t get bored. Don’t know whether or not that’s a good thing. Maybe I need to find a girlfriend?
Matt keep these doeses of information coming, I feel like I have somewhat of a pulse om GOOGLE..
I like the funnier side of you Matt. Very informative video, I especially enjoyed the part on the planner and the placement plus the discussion on 404 errors.