Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO

Steve Baker, an engineer in the search quality group at Google, just did a nice post about synonyms on the Google blog. A lot of people seem to think that Google only does simple-minded matching of the users’ keywords with words that we indexed. The truth is that Google does a lot more sophisticated stuff than most people realize. I’d say that Google does more with “semantics” and both document and query understanding than almost any other search engine.

Read the blog post for more info, but I liked a couple examples that Steve mentioned. “Pictures” and “picture” often mean the same thing, but the query [arm reduction] is very different than [arms reduction]. Also, in the query [dura ace track bb axle njs] the “bb” is probably referring to a bottom bracket while in the query [software update on bb color id] the “bb” probably means blackberry.

Still not convinced? Here’s some new stats from Steve that we haven’t made public before:

However, our measurements show that synonyms affect 70 percent of user searches [note from Matt: of course, it could be a subtle change] across the more than 100 languages Google supports. We took a set of these queries and analyzed how precise the synonyms were, and were happy with the results: For every 50 queries where synonyms significantly improved the search results, we had only one truly bad synonym.

I hope Google continues to open up more about search quality and talk more about our search rankings. Steve is a smart engineer. I love that Google has a lot of smart engineers like Steve and with any luck we’ll continue to highlight the sort of work that those engineers do.

As far as concrete advice for webmasters, the same advice still holds that we’ve always said: think about the different words that searchers might use when looking for your content. Don’t just use technical terms–think about real-world terms and slang that users will type. For example, if you’re talking about a “usb drive,” some people might call it a flash drive or a thumb drive. Bear in mind the terms that people will type and think about synonyms that can fit naturally into your content. Don’t stuff an article with keywords or make it awkward, but if you can incorporate different ways of talking about a subject in a natural way, that can help users.

Added, Jan 22, 2010: Another nice post on the Google blog, this time about highlighting users’ answers directly in search result snippets.

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Okay, we’re starting to release new webmaster videos. Normally you could follow me on Twitter to find out about each new video, but I’m on a Twitter diet until the end of January. So if you want to hear when new webmaster videos or webmaster blog posts come out, go follow @googlewmc on Twitter (that’s the official account for Google Webmaster Central).

I’ll embed the first video in the new series below (it’s about how PageRank flows from Twitter and Facebook in our web search rankings):

But usually I won’t blog about each new video. Instead make sure you follow @googlewmc . That way you’ll always find out first when new webmaster videos come out.

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Lots of people are thinking about ways to help Haiti after their horrible 7.0 earthquake.

Google recently introduced a page with a large number of resources for the Haiti earthquake, including the ability to donate money.

Also, a bunch of Googlers have worked to bring updated satellite imagery to Google Earth. You can also click to see the earthquake’s aftermath on Google Maps.

Finally, it turns out that Google’s Map Maker (which allows regular users to contribute to maps) can help with this disaster. Google added support for Map Maker in Haiti last year after Haiti suffered through Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. In less than a year, Google Map Maker has become one of the most accurate maps of Haiti, and Google is sharing the raw data with the UN. The Google Maps API provides the latest Map Maker info as a map tile set. You can read more in the blog post.

How can you help? I’d start with Google’s resource page for the quake or this page on CNN.

Update, Jan 16, 2010: Google has created (with help from the U.S. State Department) a Person Finder for the Haiti Earthquake that you can embed on your website, too:

Update, Jan 21, 2010: Google also gathered 15cm imagery (much higher quality) and just pushed that live on Google Maps.

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This is an important blog post. Go read it from the source.

Update: David Drummond from Google appears on CNBC to discuss the situation more.

Also, Google just made it so that Gmail defaults to https. This means that even if you use a public wifi hotspot, you’ll have an encrypted tunnel for the communication between your browser and Google. This makes your email much more secure against sniffing or snooping.

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