Google Dance!

I am writing this blog post looking out onto the Googleplex courtyard where webmasters are dancing and talking. We just finished the “Meet the Engineers” Q&A. Lots of people came inside building 43 to ask about crawling, duplicate content, and more. I wish I could easily summarize it, but it was just straight questions for two hours.

I think I’ll go down to dance and talk myself. If you’re at the conference, you’ve still got a couple days to catch me and chat more.

84 Responses to Google Dance! (Leave a comment)

  1. I’m looking at a remarkable Dublin sunrise. Remarkable because it’s rained incessantly here πŸ™‚

    Have fun!

  2. Sounds like the social event of the decade! I wish I was there.

    I am imagining the Googlebot, drunk, sitting on a branch outside of the building, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette, spilling his guts to a bunch of young Greyhat SEO’s who are recording him. Then he gets slapped for an inappropriate comment to GoogleMaps, and gets put on probation on Wednesday and is only allowed to crawl .edu sites for the next 6 months.

    dk

  3. Can you put together a few of the best Q&A’s?

    GaryTheScubaGuy

  4. How about a dance Matt ?

    To be honest when I read this, after I saw your video from wordcamp, I thought you might be trying to rank high for “google dance”…

  5. Matt,

    We don’t have time for dancing πŸ™‚ We need a transcript of at least some of that β€œMeet the Engineers” Q&A.

    Lets ask young Adam to do the writing for us. That way we also keep him busy away of all those females who use to surround him πŸ™‚

  6. Matt, you’re playing with a lot of webmasters nerves here…
    Improper use of the word “Google Dance” might cause some heart attacks around the globe.

    Yet… let’s rock.

  7. At the very least an MP3 could have been made for a podcast.

    The bottom line is, if there were straight questions and answers for two hours – only a few people benefited.

    Many thousands across the globe could have also benefited from the answers that were given.

    All of the Google Engineers that participated in this have an ethical obligation to each summarize the questions and answers and collectively post them on this blog in a special thread.

    This is a matter of being practical – lets forget about egos

  8. Matt Cutts – Constantly bring false hope to the Search community with expectations of a in-depth analysis of “Google dance”.

  9. I loaded up my iGoogle page, and bout fell outta my chair when I saw that title – on MattCutts.com blog.

    Me thinks Mr. Cutts has a wee bit of a mischievous streak. πŸ˜‰
    As @HawkEye said – Google Dance is not a term to be tossed around lightly.

    But it is an attention getter isn’t it – virtually guaranteed to generate some activity.

    I’ll bet analytics and webmaster tools are hopping right now with panicked webmasters frantically checking stats. πŸ™‚

  10. You got me this time. πŸ˜‰ And one my sites actually experienced some dancing in traffic so I was really wondering what was happening.

    I thought I would find some answers. Ok, maybe later…

  11. Precisation: The name Googleplex is a play on words, being a combination of the words Google and complex, and a reference to googolplex, the name given to the large …

  12. Lay off, can’t the man take a night off to cut a rug? All work and no play makes Matt a dull boy.

  13. Get down with your bad self Mr. Cutts!

  14. I knew exactly what you were talking about. Wish I could be there. Can’t wait to read the blogs from yesterday’s sessions.

  15. Matt,

    Thanks for the ‘Meet the Engineers’ event – we found that very useful as always…

    When we met I mentioned Edward de Bono and the Green Hat – to represent creativity – and to get away from the White/Black thing – there’s a good list at Wikipaedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats#de_Bono.27s_six_hats.

    Thanks again, Andy

  16. I think Matt is trying out some Link Bait in his titles.

  17. Is this why blogspot and blogger were down for an hour this morning?

  18. Hi Matt,
    You wanna make us cry and cry… this way, you’ll be able to surf our tears. Another way to make the google boat dance on a sea of webmasters pain ! πŸ™‚

  19. Here is hoping there was something ask about 301s thats included πŸ˜€

    Also SEW Matt nor anyone else has an ethical obligation to relay anything. So I have to disagre with you my friend. Sure we would all love to hear what information has been given but neither Matt or any of the other engineers have an ethical obligation to tell us anything IMHO.

    Its their world we all are just allowed to live in it for now.

  20. We want pics of the Google Dance!!! I’m so bummed I can’t make it this year!!! πŸ™

  21. I think next year you should have a contest between the google employees to see who can have the best dance routine. Maybe you can bring in some Dancing with the Stars people. πŸ™‚ It would be something to remember for sure.

  22. SEARCHENGINESWEB >

    What is with all the negativity?

  23. SEW,

    You have no idea how hectic it was up there. It was absolutely crazy. There were literally people everywhere. Next year, why don’t you come, and then you can blog about it yourself and ask all the face to face questions you want. Google doesn’t have to open up it’s doors to anyone, yet they do. So cut Matt some slack before you wreck it for all of us. Remember, this blog does not have to exist, and Google is not required to reach out to us as SEO’s or open ups its doors to us or do anything else. This is the only Fortune 500 company I know that opens itself up this much to people. If you know of another let me know. Thanks.

    Lew

  24. Dr. David Klein, at the end of the evening, I did see one really drunk conference attendee being gently shepherded back to the buses. πŸ™‚

    David, I’m sure you’ll see lots of pictures from various people. In fact, this search returns a lot of stuff already: http://flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=google+dance+2007&m=text

  25. It would be nice to see pictures or better video of this meeting. Anything what happen in Googleplex is VERY interesting for webmasters πŸ™‚

  26. Here you can see Matt explaining how to report paid links πŸ™‚

  27. Matt,

    When you have some time, it would be great if you could update us with some of the Q/A that went on .. specifically, we would like to hear new questions that don’t get typically asked.

    Joel

  28. I picked up a free pass to the exhibit hall last year, and registered for the dance… that night was one of the most important nights in the life of my web business. I left my friends outside eating corndogs and playing rock’em sock’em robot while I was upstairs conversing with the engineers.

    Too bad I couldn’t make it this year… I wasn’t even sure the dance was going to be held until the last minute as I could never find anything about it on the SES site.

  29. Matt,

    Here is the link to a few of the pics that I took with my i-phone. More to come.

    http://www.promopeddler.com/blog/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=175&Itemid=30

    Lew

  30. Sorry I missed you Matt. I didn’t make it to San Jose this year. Did MSNDude corner you at all? πŸ™‚

  31. Matt,

    Great party and great sessions at the SES. I was in attendence at the Tuesday afternoon session titled “Are paid links evil”. I felt bad for you. It kills me how everyone is now all of the sudden a Google hater. I just don’t understand it. Never before have I seen a company dedicate so much time to deliver a series of products to market that are so beneficial not only to average users but to SEO’s as well. And on top of that it is all FOR FREE!! God forbid that you want to do something right for the users and take away spammy paid links

    Anyway I wont get into politics of SERPs here I just wanted to say great party. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot from many different Google engineers.

    By the way, who was the cute blonde demo-ing Google TV ads?

  32. Dave (original)

    Matt, you’re being stalked! I hope for your sake “lew” is a 6ft blonde female πŸ™‚

  33. Sounds like an interesting conference. Would be great to get a transcript.

  34. You dance? Lol……… I was of the view all these days that you make others dance, particularly webmasters!

  35. Sure isn’t what I thought you where going to talk about..lol

  36. Lew, thanks for the pointer; nice pictures..

  37. I just have one question.

    Matt, you’re sitting in front of your laptop with a party going on below you…

    WHY?

    Enjoy some beverages of a refreshing nature and then come back and post. Drunk blog posts are always fun to read!

  38. I did go down right after that, M.W.A. πŸ™‚

    By the way, I’ll try to get permission to post my PowerPoint slides for my session just like I did with my WordCamp talk..

  39. “Google Dance!” – oh you linkbaiter you πŸ™‚

  40. I was hoping you’ll expose the next PR update ; /

    Well, I guess ill just have to wait and see.

    In the meanwhile ill enjoy the photo’s by Lew (the party itself seems really cool πŸ™‚

  41. Forget about the SEO, lets see the Time Warp!

  42. Has anyone got any notes or presentations for the event??

  43. Martin Parry, there are a whole bunch of links gathered at:

    http://www.yellowhousehosting.com/resources/2007/08/22/coverage-of-ses-san-jose-2007/

    This should get you started.

  44. Definate need for any transcripts. Would be much appreciated.

  45. I wish I was there… I hope a lot of stuff will be written about this dance…

  46. Keniki

    “Fuck the shareholders……….”

    Be nice. It just happened that Matt is a shareholder πŸ˜‰

  47. Great Matt! It was so much fun. I saw you on the dance floor as you stopped by. Dan and I were playing some video games, it was so much fun!

    I’ll be posting more pics later on of everything that I have. Thanks again for meeting up, it was a blast — can’t wait for the next event and the next chance we get to hang out.

  48. I am upset that this post is titled “Google Dance” =/

  49. Sounds like a great time, I wish my SERPs would dance a little 😐

  50. @LEW…

    WELL SAID! πŸ˜€ Too many complainers on Matts blog, every post he makes seems to have someone not happy about something. SearchEnginesWeb (nice name) should be happy he hasn’t been banned yet. Yeah, there I said it! πŸ™‚

  51. Dave (original)

    For the first time in a year I think I can finally go back to work and not have sleepless nights about black hat seo.

    Thank goodness for that! You must have a lot to ctach up on, so stay away from Matts blog for a Year please.

  52. Martin there is a LOT of online coverage already up from several bloggers and blogging teams that attended. I’ll be adding a few notes over the next few days at my blog, but the best session by session stuff is often at SEO Roundtable, Search Engine Land, and Lee’s TopRank blog. If you take some time and read a lot of online coverage you’ll probably be better informed than those of us who attended the event. Of course you don’t get the Google Party which is always something to behold. They even had snow cones this year in addition to a nice buffet dinner, drinks, dancing, and a free candy store!

    Matt it is always nice to see you and chat about interesting stuff!

  53. >>even had snow cones this year in addition to a nice buffet dinner, drinks, dancing, and a free candy store!

    I can live without snow cones, drinking, dancing and candy, but at the mere mention of a buffet dinner serving Google-Grub my mouth waters. I think I should make it to next year’s No. Calif. Dance even if I have to crawl up to it on the 101 on all fours.

    As far as coverage is concerned, about issues (duplicate content, for example):

    Maybe if we’d set our brains in gear and use our good ole common sense (and read more of Bill Slawski, and read search white papers and patents so we’d understand how IR folks think), we wouldn’t be needing the baby pablum questions to be answered at conferences.

  54. Nice, I like the ice sculpture!

    Just one question – was that pick’n’mix free? Because I think these chaps may have had more than their fair share: http://flickr.com/photos/d1ssonanc3/1214368431/ (*shudder*)

  55. I hope one of the main topic during meeting was proxy hijacking and SERP’s positions stealing as this is I think the main Google problem now. I contacted Google help and provided them with information who, when and how stole my website’s position and I got probably semi-automatic answer that they will do their best. Nothing changed in Google SERP. Two years of hard work were stolen and that’s it.

  56. For those who had a coronary attack when they saw the dreaded “Google Dance” in the title of this post, I wonder if anyone else has noticed some really strange stuff going on recently –

    Firstly, for the last few weeks (actually prob a month) on the google webmaster help forum we’ve been having just loads of people asking the same question “Why has my site dropped to PR 0” – upon investigation it does seem a lot of these sites are just suffering differences between DC’s, but we’ve seen alot of others that have had PR disappear across their site, and many of them appear completely white hat sites.

    Interestingly this doesn’t seem to have been in general matched with a concomitant drop in traffic – so it looks rather like some form of partial PR push rather than any penalty or real PR loss.

    Other sites (including my own) have seen one or two of their highest traffic pages drop completely out of the index – not the whole site, just the most valuable pages – which doesn’t necessarily equate to their highest PR pages – that’s documented here – http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_thread/thread/a408bfd0ab881fac/

    There does in fact appear to be some weird and wacky stuff going on in the index at the moment Matt – we’ve seen a bit of speculation around the place about what this “Google Dance” might mean – and even some discussion about whether or not we could do without toolbar PR altogether – that discussion got some pretty cool answers and opinions, which I think you’d probably enjoy reading, if you have time:-

    http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-chit-chat/browse_thread/thread/1315bf341e375a19/#

    I’m wondering whether the current ‘delayed’ TBPR push and relative abundance of sites knocking back to TBPR 0 might be some indication that we might in fact be seeing an announcement about the future of toolbar PR soon? It’d be a good thing, I think.

    I haven’t seen this much action in the index since the days of the REAL google dance – it’s been interesting.

    Cheers Matt,

    doc

  57. It was a great party !! Next year I’ll take a taxi over from SES because by the time I got there the Meet the Engineers was over.

    Thanks Google for the Fun, Beer and great Food.

    Glenn
    Geeks.com

  58. Thanks for the “Official Matt Cutts Worn Google T-Shirt”!!

  59. I sure would like to see the “ranks” for the “Top 10” Googlers involved in the GoogleDance!

  60. will I think we should cath u then
    Matt what about if u open forum
    I think it will be the best place to see the pro people

    have a great day

    Basim

  61. Matt Cutts; I was wondering if you had the opportunity to attend the session called:

    The SEO industry reputation

    or something like that? If you did, what did you think? You don’t have to answer it honestly if you don’t want to. LOL

    For me; it’s the same o’l same o’l spin I’ve heard about for a very long time with no one wanting to step up to the plate.

    Any thoughts?

  62. Marcia if you = WMW Marcia you should be talking at next year’s event about organic SEO.

    Lewis I brought a bag of that candy home to my daughter and it was the hit of my return though I did see some people “abusing” it. I wonder how much they went through – there was a line at the two candy stations for the entire dance I think.

  63. Quote: “I’ll try to get permission to post my PowerPoint slides for my session just like I did with my WordCamp talk”

    Reminder: It would be great if you could post them as PDF πŸ™‚

  64. I agree with Hawkeye. I got real nervous when I saw the “Google Dance” topic. I thought it might be another one of those weekends of checking where my site stood in the results every 30 minutes.

  65. Dave (original)

    As for staying away from Matts Blog, he just has to say β€œStop Keniki” and I will never post again here. I have been offered dominance of industry , threatened phoned at home and every time I tell you clowns to go to fuck yourselves. I was told I will be left with nothing and for a while it was a concern.

    Matt asked to give it a rest for few days ago (and had to delete your ramblings) in another post, since then you have posted about 20 posts repeating your same ramblings.

  66. Keniki

    I have a suggestion!

    You have already posted 12 posts out of total 53 posts on this thread. Thats 23% Kenikies πŸ™‚

    How about trying to merge your messages in few posts instead of several short posts as you do now?

  67. Dave (original)

    Matt, please ban Kenki. He perpetually keeps dribbling the same old gripes over and over and over and over……

  68. Google Dance, that sounds interesting…

    Is it some kind of re-invented breakdance routine, am off to see if there are any Google Dancers on You Tube!

  69. Hi Matt,

    it was so much fun for them, I wish i was there.
    and i agree with the forum idea, it’s going to be the best place to meet professional people as he mention it.

    Thank you.

  70. Matt, I hope you had a great time at the Google dance!

  71. Oh man…do I wish I could have been there.

    It would be great if you could summarize a few of the best questions.

    Wow, that must have been a fantastic event.

  72. Matt,

    Thanks for taking my questions at the “meet the engineers” and for so candidly sharing your thoughts on common white hat seo practices. It helps drive home that you and google really do just want clean, crisp search results AND to make money. Which on one can fault you for. Afterall, we all have an opportunity to be a shareholder, some of us just don’t take advantage of it.

    I am wondering/hoping you can and will share with us in video (remember I love video) about the best way to handle syndication of our content.

    Etailers – who create unique content on their own website, then blast that content up to Amazon, eBay, Propertyroom.com, shopping comparison site etc.

    Newswires – who all post the same AP article time and time again.

    Research labs- who produce very original and valuable content but may not have high page rank.

    All of these instances result in dup content that google has to decide “who is the orginator/most authentic” with little or no clue.

    What can we do as the owners of this content trying to drive traffice and links and hoping some other behometh site does not get all the credit? Is there a tag we can require those other sites to use like ” or does the “

    ” tag work?

    I think this is an issue that google will need to address more and more as RSS and Blogs continue to grow.

    Any chance you can shed some light for us?

    Michael

  73. Here ya go Matt.

  74. Grrr! Why didn’t the images come up….can you filter that for me so the images come up please? thanks matt

  75. google dance and then somepeople dance.

  76. I agree with one of the bloggers here we have no time for dancing… I gained 20 pounds in front of this computer trying watching Google and reach Googlory by ranking #1… but I just got discouraged. Even Matt Cutts’ Page Rank is “only a 6” you guys don’t get the hook up??

  77. When youmentioned Google Dance I thought you were going to talk about what is going on with Google right now! It seems to be really dancing, not sure what dance it is since the results you display right now is outright crap!
    Lot’s of web masters are complaining about it and I am too. I have seen my site almost disappear during the last 1-2 weeks and what I see is that it has been replaced by blog spam sites, spammy edu sites and gov forums.
    I don’t know what you guys get out of it by doing this since it can’t be something wrong in your algo you have to have some thoughts behind it, even thoug itdeosn’t seem like it.
    Most people work hard for their web sites trying to make a living, but it is getting hard when Google, the Traffic Controller #1, is letting you down all the time.
    I used to use Google a lot at work but not anymore. Search results is NOT relevant and to be able to find anything you need to type in a very long string since one or two keywords are not eough anymore. Right now I am EXTREMELY disappointed with Google πŸ™

  78. Hi George, Yes; I see many out there who are complaining. The thing is; most everyone never thinks they did anything to cause whatever it is that happened. You say you see spammy blogs, sites, etc, but then you don’t post a SERP result to prove your point. There are about a Kazillion different search terms that people use to search. I’m not seeing what you are seeing with things I follow. In fact; I’m seeing cleaner sites on the first page for the most part… not to mention that no sites I follow are experiencing anything but “more” referrals from Google. πŸ™‚

    I think Marcia in a post above sums up my thoughts about conferences and dances, etc.

    I’ve read some “interviews” lately from certain people that are quite a waste of time IMO. LOL It’s like the brain starts saying……. well Duh?

  79. Hey Matt,

    Please publish one blog on Big G Updates and on Google dance.

    Thanks,

  80. πŸ™ Deleting my comments…bad Matt bad!

    alright, touche.

    Again, great to meet you weeks back at SES.

    Hopefully we’ll see you out at Pubcon later this year.

  81. Hook line and sinker, ya got me.
    Such a tease, a few of my sites have been dancing so I was hoping for answers.

  82. Hi Matt,

    For the last 3 weeks we have noticed the following obscured situation with the high frequency keywords: the Google results are changing couple times Π° day and also the issue of DataCenters is different.
    What are the reason for this?

    Thanks

  83. Thats why Google is known as the best business to work for. Everyone dances as part of their jobs.

  84. can you put some few Q&As?

    and Can you publish a great post on Google Dance and Updating system of Google

    I would be very thankful to you if you publish a article on Google Dance

    Thanks

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