Gord in the house!

Aha. Gord Hotchkiss has joined that rollicking scrum that we call the blogosphere. 🙂 Go Mattdot his new site, Out of my Gord. You might not have seen that Bruce Clay, Inc. has a blog either. Let’s see, what else? Performancing is on my RSS reading list too.

67 Responses to Gord in the house! (Leave a comment)

  1. Speaking of blogs, since I recently reinstalled my PC, I wanted to subscribe to every google blog out there, to get news from the source if you want…. what a nightmare!!! You really, REALLY should appoint someone (it might be you Matt or someone near you, I know it’s not your job, but you are the most known G blogger right now), to take a look into all the G’s blogs out there and make some standarizations…

    Just to name a few ones:
    – One G blog had a list of every other G blog out there. That was great! It allowed me to find the others all so much faster. But why only on 1 or 2, shouldn’t it be on EVERY G blog???
    – Site Feed: I guess it can be a matter of taste if you show an icon, or a text saying Atom, or RSS, or whatever, that much can be understood, but it SHOULD appear somewhere in the page!!! VISUALLY!!! Not just under the meta-tags… in more than one blog I had to check out the source, and copy the feed’s url to my Thunderbird… NOT COOL!
    – Site Feed’s Validation: Come on! This one’s a no brainer. Your site’s feed should validate! There were at least 3 blogs whose feeds didn’t validate at all. That’s a software glitch, friend.

    Regards,

    Luis Alberto

  2. HAHA Mattdot? I have felt the Mattdot effect a slight bit being mentioned in nofollow comments! Lookout /.

  3. C’mon don’t tease us with just a couple, let’s be all web.20 and transparent and share your feedlist. Export you OMPL to bloglines and publish the URL, I’ve been doing it with mine for a while now.

  4. Hi Matt

    This comment is not related to the current post but i really dont know where to ask or post this question. I live in india and not getting any chance to participate in any search engine conferences or sessions. I do remember you were mentioning about in some conference there will be oppurtunity for the webmasters to ask the experts to review their site to get feedback to improve their geniune SERP.

    I like to know how peopl like us going to get a chance liket this? or how i can get some expert advise on improving my site.

  5. Can’t wait ’til I have the readership to SEOmoz-dot someone… or should that be moz-dot?

  6. Graywolf, I would do that, but I just re-organized my RSS feeds. I’ve got Search, Whitehat, Blackhat, and Geek. You’re listed under blackhat, and I’m not sure I’d want that. 😉

  7. Once you realize there are no hats, you can do anything you want 😉

  8. graywolf

    “Once you realize there are no hats, you can do anything you want”

    Of course there are hats, also gray ones 😀

  9. Disco-dot me, yo! My blog is worth $3,387.24, so far… LOL 🙂

    Matt, are you gonna hold’em or fold’em? 😛

  10. Rollicking Scrum! What a great phrase to coin. When you retire from search you can go into poetry.

  11. That Luis guy is onto something.

    What else is out there from Google bloggers? It doesn’t necessarily have to be related to search either. For example, I have some Adsense questions I’d love to ask, and I know another bunch of people that would as well. But the official adsense.blogspot.com site doesn’t allow comments.

    Rather than publish the whole list, Matt, what about stuff like that?

  12. please Matt, sorry for the OT. But, I don’t find the answer for any place: I want to show the people only what this people looking for at google. NOT THE INDEX of my site.

    Can I do SiteMap for the entire site and only show 3 or 4 links in my index.? I mind, can be sitemap the only one reference for crawlers?.

    Example: users looking for ‘coca cola distributors’. Click in the results and get just “coca cola distributors”, not a entire site.

  13. >> Search, Whitehat, Blackhat, and Geek.

    Ha – the MattDot RSS category list. How about sharing the Whitehats?

  14. That Performancing is a stealthy one! 😉

  15. Hey Matt,

    Anymore BlackHat sites we shouldn’t follow?

  16. Hi Matt you didnt answer my earlier question.

  17. What if I’m a whitehat that just hangs out with the blackhats? Do I get my own category?

  18. You surprize me Matt, I thought the only people that still talked about hat color or the lack thereof were a bunch of newbees that did not know better.

    Hat color divides people.

    Divide and conquer baby… if you can…

  19. Lots0

    “You surprize me Matt, I thought the only people that still talked about hat color or the lack thereof were a bunch of newbees that did not know better.”

    Ok. Instead of hat colours, lets talk about ethicalhats and non-ethical hats.

    oes that sounds better 😀

  20. >>>lets talk about ethicalhats and non-ethical hats

    Lets not. 🙂

    Why not instead talk about people that don’t abide by googles guidelines (Google a for profit US Company – not a definer of ethics) .

    Just because some mom and pop site uses hidden text or some other method google does not approve of does not mean the webmaster and/or owner of that site are going to hades nor is their soul going to be doomed to walk the earth forever.

    Their website might get penalized by this company for not doing what the company wanted them too, but that is all it boils down too, a penalty from a company for not behaving the way the company wants.

    Ethics has nothing to do with it… unless you equate not doing what Google wants to being unethical… A rather far stretch don’t you think?

  21. RE: “Ethics has nothing to do with it… unless you equate not doing what Google wants to being unethical… A rather far stretch don’t you think?”

    Not for those of us with ethics 🙂 When you “cheat” (go outside the Google guidelines) you are unethically taking business from those that play by the rules.

  22. >>>Not for those of us with ethics…

    Not very nice, but typical.

    You don’t know me or what I do, yet you insinuate that I have no ethics and you do.

    Is that ethical? I don’t think so. But then I don’t allow my ethics to be dictated to me by some company, even a company like google.

  23. RE: “You don’t know me or what I do, yet you insinuate that I have no ethics and you do”

    I would have smilies with universal….guess not. My statement of

    “When you “cheat” (go outside the Google guidelines) you are unethically taking business from those that play by the rules.”

    still stands.

  24. Suggesting….

    Google Blackhat Spam-O-Meter GBSOM

    Similar to Google TB. Measuring blackhat spam level on a site on scale 1-10. Once a user arrives at a site containing blackhat spam techniques, the GBSOM shall move showing the level, and a sound play:

    Caution..Caution .. Blackhat Spam Falling 😀

  25. What if I’m a whitehat that just hangs out with the blackhats? Do I get my own category?

    Say if whitehats or non SEO’s are hangin’ out with the homies, the law comes in with gunz-a-blazin’ and we get hit, are we considered collateral damage? 🙂

    Funny stuff, I am sending this post to someone who does cartoons to inspire 😉

  26. >>>When you “cheat” (go outside the Google guidelines) you are unethically taking business from those that play by the rules.

    Not been at this too long have you?

    I own a search engine, somewhat smaller and less well known than google, but a search engine none the less.

    If you don’t follow MY guidelines in my search engine are you unethical?

    No way, all you are is just someone that needs to have their URLs removed from my index.

    The same thing goes for google. If someone is not acting like google wants them too, google has the RIGHT to remove them from their index, not the right to call them derogatory names or incinuate that this person has bad ethics.

    Everyone has the right to build their Website any way they want, no matter if google likes it or not.

    Just like google has the right to list or NOT list Website they choose for ANY reason.

  27. RE: “If you don’t follow MY guidelines in my search engine are you unethical?”

    A most definite YES if I make a conscious decision to go outside your guidelines with the sole intention of cheating your SE.

    Of course users can build their site anyway they like, that’s not in dispute. However, SE spammers build their site *specifically* to try and cheat Google into ranking their site better, i.e. knowingly go outside the Google guidelines. When they do this, they cheat the SE user, Google and the site whos place they have taken by cheating the system. It matters not whether they are caught by Google as to whether they are cheating or not. They are cheating and doing so knowingly.

    Let’s say you play football and your opposing player *blatantly* knocks the ball into your goal with his hand. Now, no laws have been broken but their action is most definately unethical and is cheating. *This stands whether the umpire see the cheating or not.*

    A SE spammers actions are unethical.

    DEFINITION: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/unethical
    unethical – not conforming to approved standards of social or professional behavior; “unethical business practices”
    wrong – contrary to conscience or morality or law; “it is wrong for the rich to take advantage of the poor”; “cheating is wrong”; “it is wrong to lie”

    Now that describes SE spammer to a tee.

  28. >>>that’s not in dispute. However…

    How can you argue with statements like that…

  29. Oops.. hit the enter key on that last post before I was ready.

    Either you have the right to build sites ANY way you want or you don’t, you can’t have it both ways.

    peace

  30. SE spammers are the ONLY ones who want it both ways. That is, they want to be included in Google AND intentionally fool Google into thinking their site is ‘relavant’ by *blatantly* going outside their guidelines with only one intention. Cheating! Now that’s unethical (A point I notice you have diverted from :))

    All us honest SEO/Webmasters *blatantly* stay inside the guidelines. All we want is a level an honest playing field and a fair go.

  31. Hi Matt

    Long time no post.

    Hope everything is well with you, yours, Emmy and J.D

  32. either you have the right to build sites ANY way you want or you don’t, you can’t have it both ways.

    I’m gonna weigh in on this one.

    you DO have the right to build your site any way you want. It’s your site, nobody can tell you what you can or can’t do with it.

    However Google is Sergey and Larry’s (and those of us who own stock’s) site.
    and they can do with it whatever they like.

    It’s not a right to be included in the Google index, it’s a privledge. Google does what they think will be best for the business.. In this case, what’s best for the business is to do what’s best for the user. If more users find what they want in search, more users use it, more people click ads, more people advertise, etc etc…

    Look at your spam site from a user perspective.. 99.9999% of spam sites are NOT useful to users at all (with BMW.de, 310loan.com etc being exceptions… as these sites were banned and re-included… in the case of 310loan, still with it’s hidden keyword layer)

    anyway… most spam sites offer no content, for if they did they’d do fairly well in rankings anyway.

    Just as it’s your right to do whatever you want on your website, it’s Google’s right to exclude any websites they want for any reason. This is really a non issue. You either follow the guidelines, or you don’t get listed.

  33. Now I’m curious. lots0, what’s your engine?

    And I don’t really find what Dave said to be self-contradictory.

    He was saying that webmasters can choose to build their sites as they wish, but if they choose to spam, then they have to be prepared to accept the potential consequences of getting blacklisted by SEs, directories, other sites, and the like.

    It’s like cheating on your girlfriend, wife, significant other, or in some cases all three. There’s nothing illegal about that, and you can choose to do that if you want. But if you choose to, there are potential consequences.

    And that makes sense. I think you might have misread what he was trying to say, that’s all.

  34. Wow Mattcutts.com non-seo related topics get hijacked faster then a Google handjob to a viagra site =)

  35. (Long Time Reader – First Time Poster)

    Okay, the “Mattdot” thing got me. I’m really enjoying finding other blogs out there from yours, and cast a vote for you to keep it up!

    Coincidentally, I also just got a new hat. It’s pink.

  36. >>>All we want is a level an honest playing field and a fair go.
    Fantasy land is what you want. In real life there is no such thing as a “level playing field”.

    >>>…webmasters can choose to build their sites as they wish, but if they choose to spam, then they have to be prepared to accept the potential consequences…

    Again… Yes that is what he and I both were saying. The difference lies in the fact that I don’t think it is unethical to build a site that is outside the the wishes of some company that I have no control over and from what I can tell Dave and someothers do.

    As far as my search engine goes, it is a nitch engine and it would not be appropriate to list it here. 😉 Besides that, I would not want to get a link or traffic from a “bad neighborhood”… lol

  37. RE: “The difference lies in the fact that I don’t think it is unethical to build a site that is outside the the wishes of some company that I have no control over and from what I can tell Dave and someothers do.”

    That’s the thing you see, you DO have control, I do believes it’s unethical and many SEO professionals would simply say “No”. Why “No”? Because some of us care about the industry we work in and take pride in our work. I will not cheat for money!

    If I were a footballer I would say “No” also if the coach said “I want you to cheat”.

    RE: “As far as my search engine goes, it is a nitch engine and it would not be appropriate to list it here”

    I thought so 😉

  38. >>>I do believes it’s unethical…

    Ya I think we all got that, several times. But can you explain why you believe that without using a bunch of lame sports analogies?

    >>>I thought so…

    Really? Another ethical comment from the self proclaimed expert on ethics.

    You thought what? That I run some kind of an ‘unethical’ search engine, because I do not agree with you?
    (BTW Dave – just what do you think an ‘unethical’ search engine would be anyway? )

    I look at the people that go around inferring that others do not have ethics, much like I look at the people that go around telling everyone at every chance they get how honest they are.

    Anyone that tells me they are ‘honest’ more than once, I would never consider trustworthy…

    Anyone that goes around saying they have ethics all the time, I would never… well you get the idea.

  39. Shoemoney – Are you sure it was a handjob or was it just the weakening of lame techniques used by spammers to get top rank for their drug companies?

  40. Dave (Original)

    RE: Ya I think we all got that, several times. But can you explain why you believe that without using a bunch of lame sports analogies?

    Err, no you haven’t “got that”. I HAVE explained at least twice why. Here it is again for the last time. People who *blatantly* go outside Google’s guidelines in an effort to cheat the SE into a better ranking are being unethical. When you “cheat” (knowlingly go outside the Google guidelines) you are unethically taking business from those that play by the rules.

    My posting on the definition of the meaning of the word “unethical” is VERY apt to those that cheat the SE as I have described above.

    RE: “That I run some kind of an ‘unethical’ search engine, because I do not agree with you?”

    You are confused. I’m NOT saying a SE is ethical, or unethical as it’s a machine.

    Lots0, I’m happy to debate with you, but ONLY if you can do so in a mature way and refrain from the petty insults. They really say more about yourself than me anyway.

  41. I wish matt would come back from his sabbatical just to kill this discussion!

    Just kidding, carry on.

  42. What *is* unethical (tantamount to fraud, actually) is for an SEO company to promise a top Google position to a client, take a few hundred thousand off the unsuspecting client for said work, and then get the site banned for using methods that the search engine had already said that they woud ban a site for.

    You might say that it is down to the client to perform “due diligence” before forking out the cash (and to a certain extent it is), but I still say that the SEO practitioner is an unethical “cowboy”, who shouldn’t be allowed to continue working in the industry.

    Just because one person gets conned by the Tinkers into letting them re-tarmac their drive, and doing a poor quality job at a very inflated price, doesn’t mean that the Tinkers should be allowed to continue offering their substandard service either.

    In professions such as medicine, law, accounts, etc, the most dodgy of the practitioners are “struck off” and ejected from the industry. I can’t wait for that to start happening with the most blatent of the spam and scam artists that are most prevalent in this industry….

  43. Dave (Original)

    YES IT IS UNETHICAL

    Fully agree Ian! The sooner there is proper reglation in the SEO industry, the better.

    As it is, any con person, cheat, cowboy etc can dupe clients into paying thousands only to end up having their site being banned.

    The spammers take full advantage of this day after day!

  44. I believe Google is so far ahead of spam now that the only thing left to do is create useful stuff. What a concept eh? LOL!

  45. Is it just me, or does the concept of a handjob being associated with Viagra seem somewhat counterproductive?

  46. Dave (Original)

    RE: “…left to do is create useful stuff…”

    Fortunately SE spammers no clue as to what quality content is. They are also a rather thick lot and like dogs, are creatures of habit 🙂

  47. Oh come on. SE spammers are all about the quality content! Just look at all the valuable information repeated ad nauseam at least once every other site these days about some medical breakthrough/condition/solution/lawyer that will help you fight it.

    I hadn’t even heard of mesothelioma before people started spamming the hell out of it.

  48. By the way, Matt, I know someone mentioned before about how sometimes searches in quotes don’t always return the exact phrase.

    The same thing happens with phone numbers now.

    http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2006-11,GGLD:en&q=%22425+706+0025%22

    Just wanted to point it out in case someone hadn’t already.

  49. >>>Lots0, I’m happy to debate with you, but ONLY if you can do so in a mature way and refrain from the petty insults. They really say more about yourself than me anyway.

    Dave, you must have forgotten there is a record (this thread) as to what you and I both wrote??? 🙁

    If I build a doorway page that is way outside google guidelines and then block google bot from that page and googlebot still indexes it…. am I a spammer, am I unethical or did I just build a page and thats all there is to it…

    It is googles responsibility to remove what google does not want in its index. Remember ONLY the search engines determine what is or is not search engine spam in their index.

    Sooo, If for example, Yahoo, MSN and ASK were all to allow hidden links in their index (in other words they all decide that hidden links are NOT spam) would it still be ‘unethical’ to to put hidden links on a page even if google still said hidden links were spam?

    See Dave, the issue of search engine spam is far more complicated than, “Spam Bad – Bad Spammers – unethical spammers”. But some folks just can’t seem to get their head around that.

    Anyone can build any page any way they want, if google does not want that page in their index it is googles problem and not the author of the pages problem, even if that page is designed specifically to go against the search engines guidelines.

    Simplistic answers or analogies can not hope to deal with the search engine spam problem in an effective way.

    Open discussion with differing viewpoints is very important in dealing with low quality search results, I think we can all agree with that, and I believe that is one reason why Matt has this blog. (and that is what this is really ALL about – low quality search results)

    I would also add that inferring that anyone that disagrees with you is a spammer or ‘unethical’ is also very unhelpful in attempting to discuss this subject. Some people, like myself, get offended when someone infers they are unethical or a spammer.

  50. Hey Matt, what’s going on with the supplemental results? We could do with a quick headsup/update if you get a chance.

    thanks!

  51. Where is Matt ?

  52. Honeymoon?

  53. Surely Matt would plan a honeymoon somewhere with a wireless hotspot 🙂

    On a serious note …

    >>Matt Cutts Said,
    >>March 23, 2006 @ 12:23 am

    >>Harith, I did. milius, let’s get Bigdaddy out first and then we’ll start >>to talk about it more in the next few months.

    Can we talk about it now? eCommerce (no hat) sites that are selling 20 different lengths of widgets a1…z99 are having 90% of pages shifted to supplemental. Even after 9 years of industry good standing.

    I would love for an entry that covers how “Big Daddy” is treating the static commerce sites that have no reason to provide fresh content about a “gonzolyazie widget” they have been selling for 20 years.

    I would assume that in the quest to provide the best results to the search engine user community it would be factored in that maybe a significant percentage are actually looking to buy. Some folks might start forming opinions that with the new infrastructure that merchants will lose organic harmony with their target market. Which in essence will increase PPC budgets.

    With that said it could be possible that ad dollars will be shifted to other sources if a feeling of uncertainty exists.

    In other words; Throw us a bone, with some meat on it! :p

    Email provided is my account for adwords/analytics/sitemaps.
    Heck you might even remember me from your geek travels while at Carolina. 🙂

  54. “Honeymoon?”

    Don’t think so. Because Matt usually tells us when he travel or when there is something with his family or cats.

    I’m afraid that Matt has already left Google, for one reason or the other. In that case we should wish him good luck and Godspeed.

  55. At least, this is the only self maintaining blog.

  56. >Ralf Said,
    >May 4, 2006 @ 3:11 pm

    >At least, this is the only self maintaining blog.

    Maybe someone can set up a MattChatt or MattTalk so we can all postulate on his whereabouts.

  57. excellent idea John lets start here after:

    WHERE IS MATT ?

  58. Where’s Matt? Trying to sort out the gigantic mess that is Big Daddy. That’s my guess. After all, it’s beginning to look like over-zealous anti-spamming is at the root of the problem.

    Weird isn’t it? Turns out the Web has a whole bunch of stuff in it that isn’t just carefully crafted “unique” copy aimed purely at attracting Google rankings and AdWord dollars. Who knew? A bunch of unique words cobbled together to give the semblance of “useful content” isn’t the be-all and end-all of merit out there in Web-land.

    Now. If Google can just re-adjust their filters based on this revolutionary discovery and put back the millions of stupidly deleted pages, then maybe the Web can get back to being the useful place it used to be before Big Daddy.

  59. Dave (Original)

    RE: “Sooo, If for example, Yahoo, MSN and ASK were all to allow hidden links…”

    There is no IF Lots0. If you having to resort to If scenarios your argument is non-existent. All I can say to that is, IF my Grandma had balls, she be my Grandpa 🙂

    RE: “Remember ONLY the search engines determine what is or is not search engine spam in their index.”

    Yes the do and that is why I say it’s Unethical to blatantly go outside them in an effort to trick Google into a better SERP.

    RE: “Anyone can build any page any way they want, if google does not want that page in their index it is googles problem and not the author of the pages problem, even if that page is designed specifically to go against the search engines guidelines.”

    Yes, of course people CAN do certain things. That however does not automatically mean it’s ethical.

    So far I have not read or seen anything to convince me that SE are ethical in their actions. Feel free to have the last say.

  60. Dave (Original)

    RE: “So far I have not read or seen anything to convince me that SE are ethical in their actions. Feel free to have the last say.”

    Should be;

    So far I have not read or seen anything to convince me that SE spammers are ethical in their actions. Feel free to have the last say.

  61. eCommerce Blues

    >Tahder Said,
    >>eCommerce (no hat) sites that are selling 20 different lengths of widgets a1…z99 are having 90% of pages shifted to supplemental.

    I hear ya. And there is only so much one can write about this type of product (same type, different Mfgs, that sort of thing). If I were to add more content to those product pages, I would be doing it purely for Search Engines, NOT USERS! I have to believe Google is aware of this.

  62. God, you guys haven’t learned anything.

    If you want to lure Matt out of his hidey-hole, you have to let out the Cutts call.

    Hang on, I’ll find him.

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  63. BTW, I wish him a lot of real spammers, posting hundreds of URL’s at once

  64. “Once you realize there are no hats, you can do anything you want”

    There is no spoon.

  65. Definitely agree to appoint 1 person just blogging, nothing else!

  66. yep, blogging is more and more popular nowadays….

  67. I don’t blame people for starting.
    Blogging is getting more and more popular by the day. But your site Matt is one of a kind! Because you discuss interesting and helpful topics. Ive increased by msn serach rank by 750 place since first reading your blogs.
    Keep helping us Matt!

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