Comments on: Christmas Truce of 1914

By: vary

vary — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 11:18:22 +0000

Why not make a official blog for SEO, we don’t want to find the useful info from searchenginewatch, webmasterworld, or more other sites. It will took me more time.

By: Chung

Chung — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 14:09:29 +0000

Matt,

Google should invent some democratic method of indexing the pages and ranking them. SEO for Google is too difficult and when the big boys come up with the money the small kids like us are dead…

By: Peter Faber

Peter Faber — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:41:23 +0000

Matt,

I´m hoping you can shed some light on your opinions on how search quality can improve,..

Peter

By: Peter Faber

Peter Faber — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 01:40:33 +0000

Hi Matt,

You mentioned in this blog: “My job at Google is to improve our quality, and I spend a lot of time working on webspam and webmaster issues.”

To be honest, I am worried. Google seems to have an enormous focus on how to get/keep spam out of the SERPs. So much even that anything else seems to no longer be that important anymore.

Google revolutionized and improved online search enormously with its pagerank algorithm. Since then it has had 2 focusses: Increase the index and combatting the abuse of the pagerank algorithm. I can’t really see any other improvements to its search results.

When people started to use Google they were amazed. All the sudden it was easy to find what you were looking for. Searching no longer was a whole project that took an hour before you found something you could actually use.

What has changed since then?

Bigger index, that´s about it. For the rest Google just kept growing because many people started using Google. But that´s because the others waited and waited and waited and now they´re like the google of a couple of years ago. Yahoo specifically. (not saying I want to promote Yahoo. I like Google’s presentation much better.)

This whole crusade against spam seems to have taken over Google’s objectives. At first you would think that taking out spam is great for maintaining quality. And it is. But it doesn’t do anything for improving the quality. I am hoping to see a leap forward like the pagerank algorithm did.

But what can there be improved in the SERPs besides keeping the spam out? Is Google’s future now limited by its ability to keep the spam out of the SERPs? I sincerely hope that´s not the case.

Are we at a point that the quality of the SERPs are determined by the quality of the best sites available on the internet? If this is true you can’t improve quality. Is this this the point Google is at?

Sure I am upset because a site of mine lost 75% if its traffic due to the last updates. But at the same time I am happy because another site of mine is just getting more and more traffic. And for the love of (whoever you like) I can’t see any difference between the 2 sites in relation to SEO (just simple on-site optimization and no active link building other than some directory submissions in the beginning).

What can Google do to improve quality? Besides combatting spam which really is nothing more than quality maintenance, not quality improvement, what can you do?

By: localudal

localudal — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 21:31:59 +0000

You say “…my main goal is to find out how to make Google better.” It’s my hobby, too, for the past two years or so. Maybe, from another side of this mammoth and definitely outside of it, but believe me: here [url]http://goolocalizations.blogspot.com[/url] you may find not just rants about riduculously poor record of Google at certain markets, but also some remedies. Have a look at my sections “Googlocalizations”, “Googlese”, and “Googler”.

Email me what you think.
(I admit, chances are you don’t have a slightest idea of what I was blogging there about. Or it’s not even a problem as you’re outsourcing it that far, to be ever visible. Maybe the, give me an email of a person who WAS responsible? Thank you.)

By: Lew

Lew — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 04:38:52 +0000

I think that Google reaching out to webmasters and seo guys is great. It is truely beneficial when a company can have liasons that bring about a education thats leads to a better product. Matt is great at answering questions and helping people. (Even when he is asked a question that he has to pull up short on when Larry walks into the conversation)

By: HaHa

HaHa — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 05:25:49 +0000

Haha.
I’m sorry to be the odd one out here in this ruba dub dub each others back thread.The danger in top google engineers and amateur spammers fraternising is that a fools clique develops, where everyone who thinks they matter is on first name terms and everyone thinks all is well with the world.
They all get blogs and they all link to each other.Very Quaint and Very cute.The only problem is the outlook and perspective is incestuous and blinkered and often at odds with whats really happening in google world.Matt thinks because he talked to some blogspammer he knows whats going on and the blogspammer talks to google so he thinks he knows whats going on.
A bit like politics and politicians.
Google has a hospital full of PHD’s .They don’t need to ask any spammer whats working and whats not.For God’s sake look at the serps and do what the amateur spammers are doing themselves and reverse engineer the results and find the methods that are working.For all your talk of google’s sophistication Matt , google has lost its grip on expired domains, hidden text and hidden links, cloaking, JS redirects, expired blogs, message boards.
Just take for example a adult kw ‘nude latina girls’ in the top 40 results there is only 1 or 2 real adult sites in the results.All the rest are spam.Its not too hard to see how they got there.Even blind Feddy can see the spam.But peers and followers tend to go along with the hype and think all is well.Haha.

By: Brian Mark

Brian Mark — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 04:57:51 +0000

Meet the Engineers was an amazingly refreshing event.

After SES San Jose last year, I went away ranting about how there were actually Google employees at the Google party, while Yahoo seemed content to just send us off to a museum and keep us from our computers for a bit (if the SEO’s aren’t at their PC’s, the engineers can take it easy!) This year, they had a few employees at their event, had a small booth for meeting their engineers, but Google blew them away again by having a HUGE employee turnout and a much more open engineering event.

Don’t get me wrong, the amusement park was cool. But I find it to be sort of like taking your in-laws out for supper… it’s just not as personal as inviting them over to your own house, which is exactly what Google has done for us. I don’t care where they take us, nothing beats going to Google’s house for the evening. Now, about that tour…

The only thing I’d improve for next year is the T-shirts… although the blue is better than the brown from last year.

Brian.

By: AussieWebmaster

AussieWebmaster — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 15:49:01 +0000

Jealousy is a tough thing to control at times – like anyone else who enjoys working in this industry – the opportunity was the dream happening all of us would have liked to be part of.

Guess some people can’t just be envious and let the green monster get the better of them…

By: PhilC

PhilC — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 15:02:21 +0000

It’s all very well fraternising with the ‘enemy’ and taking notes, but it’s a bit one-way, isn’t it? There’s no way that you Google people are going to give as good as you get. Now you be the one drinking the alcohol, and I’ll be the one drinking lemonade, and then let’s chat

On the other hand, if it causes Google to deal with things like scraper sites, then it’s definitely worthwhile.