Update: This post was an April Fool’s joke as well. I was hoping to catch people off-guard by doing a late-night post after all the other pranks were out there. Clicking on the video link just gets you rickrolled in a creative way.
Okay, I admit that my “I’m tired of April Fool’s” post was just a ruse. A couple people almost fell for the bait.
I did a couple April Fools posts this year; one about getting a Firefox tattoo (it was a temporary stick-on tattoo) and one joke about how the iPhone has the magical power to connect to almost anything.
To make up for playing pranks today, I recorded a brief movie about some of the signals that Google uses to rank web pages. We publicly say that Google uses over 200 different signals in our ranking algorithms, but we don’t always talk about them much. If you’re interested to hear more about the signals that Google uses, here’s the recording.
And I apologize for all the April Fool’s jokes — you just have to give yourself one day a year to have fun, right? 
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh, I think I got the wrong url for the video. Let me find the right one..
Added: this is the right video.
That’s the right url.
Yups matt and thanks for the suggestion m going to implement the spam filter soon
it will look like this:
http://ankitrawat.com/blog/new-spam-filter-for-my-blog/
Ankit, that’s a pretty simple captcha. Are you worried that your captcha is too simple, so spammers will be able to solve it? Or are you mainly just trying to raise the bar a tiny amount so that bots won’t guess it?
m worried and trying to raise it so bots won’t able to guess it … any suggestion on how much i have to raise this equation ??
Matt,
You must have had too many Sprites
Those URLs for the video you mentioned are wroooooooooong ones
My Wife allows ME 1 day a Year for fun, so yep
No no, now this is the right video: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=b4PLowZC-1s
I guess there are people out there who wondered about your taste in music… now they know.
heh
Vanessa did seo as seen though a buffy filter so maybe theres a space for the muppets do SEO – maybe Danny Sulivan could do i”ts not easy being white hat”
OK, Matt, I own up.
I normally sit on the sidelines watching (and laughing) as people fall for all those really obvious April Fool’s pranks.
However, I must admit it. I was completely taken in by your Firefox tattoo story.
Hook, line and sinker. Reel me in, coat me in breadcrumbs and put me in the deep fat fryer. Really well done though.
Still makes me laugh thinking about it even now.
Cute Matt – really nice tutorial
Deb
You got me with both links. You know we want those signals, Matt!! Grrrrr. :p
Gee, I thought the Firefox tattoo was a great idea. Just not on the back of your neck!
Sitting here thinking…”Cool, some inside secrets from Matt today, should please our readers. [click]….” I can’t publish what I said next.
OK, who played that muppets video all the way through? That song will be in my head all day. Happy April 2nd!
After trying to setup google apps for my company email 3 times and all three times finding it unusable for one reason or another I wouldn’t be surprised if google uses the muppets for it’s inspiration …. a bit nasty but unfortunately true.
I did enjoy the video though
Thanks for Rickrolling us with that Google signal link Matt.
Andy C, I’m glad that I got someone with some harmless fun. Happy April Fool’s. April 1st and Halloween are two favorite holidays at Google..
Andy Beal, I figured that so many people went early with their April Fool’s pranks that I would sit back and bide my time going for the late joke.
Jaan Kanellis, at least it was muppetrolling — a more creative version of rickrolling.
Here’s a video my wife took of me on this very subject – no whiteboard required
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBMt762zGP4
Never, ever apologize for having fun. Besides, after Google buys Cre8asiteforums, we’ll be working buddies, right?
I knew it sounded to good to be true.
It’s not funny,
I don’t like this April’s fool crap.
We do a short time a day to get informed and I’m not losing it with pranks!
So Matt, you’ve promised an instructive video about Google and didn’t delivered so I’m linking to a video of Seth Godin on Google http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B62p-dEfUZM for those who are tired of this Never gonna give you up.
regards
Lucio
I will never again do anything more than peruse posts on this blog that are posted within 48-hours of 4/1.
I still updated all of my Wordpress blogs this year though; it’s a tradition now.
DAMN FRICKN RICKROLLS!
can’t believe peeps believed the tattoo was real.. it looked so fake
Lol, i love the update Matt someone put their foot down?
So, you’re never gunna give up the the signals that Google uses to rank web pages. Right? Cool. My biggest thing is: are not SEOs helping to make the SEs better with keyword targeting? I think as SEOs, those of us who don’t know the Google engine signals for rank should be given a break and told some secrets. Couldn’t you play an April fools joke on Google next year and really give out some rank signals? If no, how about if there was some kind of fiduciary agreement with SEOs outside of Google? We could create a contract that says if these secrets were ever made public, the SEO who signed the contract would have to pay a large penalty.