Submit video questions for July 2009

This Thursday afternoon I’ll record some new videos, so I created a Google Moderator page where you can post suggested topics and vote topics up and down. I won’t be able to answer every question, but I’ll tackle several popular questions and a few interesting questions. Please suggest topics that lots of people would be interested in, not just questions about specific sites. If you can ask about a topic that requires more than yes/no answers, that probably makes the videos more interesting too.

The suggestions for videos don’t have to be about search or SEO. I really enjoyed doing the barcode scanning video, for example. So I’d love to tackle a few more general questions like “What settings or Labs do you use in Gmail?” or “Do you have any power user tips for Twitter? What does ‘OH’ mean, anyway?” I’m happy to tackle some broad questions like “What do you think the future of search is?” So post some interesting topics and we’ll see which ones we can tackle. Thanks!

37 Responses to Submit video questions for July 2009 (Leave a comment)

  1. Why does Google allow pdf, and other file formats to rank on first page of Google? Can Google make a one box search for non html documents like videos, pictures, products call it google docs results or something like that. A good example is “medical malpractice insurance” 6 of the top 10 are pdf files. I’m pretty sure people typing in that are not looking for white papers.

  2. Hi,

    I am using a different email accounts for google analyrics and adsense for my blog. Hence, I am not able to track my adsense clicks using analytics ( which page gets more clicks, which search term gets more clicks etc ) is there any way to allow this, or import my analytics settings to the other email account ?

    Dinu
    Bangalore

  3. What “location aware” apps do you see coming to iPhone and/or Android. Will location specific data come only from Google maps or other sources? Thanks for the opportunity to contribute.

  4. How can a local business owner claim a listing that has been previously listed by TripAdvisor, Restaurant.com, Hostelworld, or other booking based platforms that have previously claimed the business?

  5. Hey folks, it’s much better to post the suggested topics over at http://moderator.appspot.com/#16/e=a5513 where people can vote on them. That Google Moderator page will be the main place I look for questions.

  6. Okay, I have added my question there 🙂

  7. Don’t forget to create multiple Google accounts so you vote your question(s) up.

  8. @ Dave

    LOL … how many accounts do you have ? 😉

  9. Hi Matt,

    Recently I’ve been researching help organization (Red Cross, Cancer support etc) sites. Most of the sites have link-pages.

    Do the links from these link pages pass PageRank? What is your (Google’s) view on link pages?

  10. Here’s a suggestion – can we please ban user “Alex, Horn-Bad Meinberg, Germany” so we don’t have to vote on numerous questions about the life of Matt Cutts and can actually vote on something that is relevant to SEO? Grr!

  11. Sweet, following through on your last post. Keeping the videos and allowing everyone to decide on which ones we want to see.

    Great work, heading over to ask my question about Google Apps.

  12. Does Google really review spam report? A group of spamming website are being reported but not being taken any action after several months.

  13. Did you see the story about how cats train their humans
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8147566.stm

    May be do a hack or iphone/android program to warn you when your cat is trying this on – bonus points for mounting this on a midstorms robot which then feeds the kitties

  14. I would love to see some new additions to the google education channel, We use a lot of google instruction videos in our courses, I would love to see someone talk about the cool things that google is doing by sharing education, or more education/instructional videos on google aps, API’s, or just google in general. We use them, would love to have a better base of videos to work from. Thanks Much!

  15. #1: What is the best way to handle special characters like alpha, and beta? Should you code the symbol using “α”, use “a” or use “alpha”? No users are going to put “α” into a search box, and “a” doesn’t really refine the search that much… but you would know that better than me. What do users usually search with, and what is best for SEO?

    #2: What do you think about the Twitter document hacking debacle? Do you think that Google Doc documents are secure? What about cloud storage in general?

  16. waiting for an answer on some questions, i have addeted my question there

  17. Why is google “dancing” so much lately? In the last few months we have noticed that Google is shuffling results a lot more often than before.

  18. What can we do if a competitor is link spamming a customer website to get it banned?

  19. @Ian What’s up with that guy, anyway? Man crush?

  20. Come on guys, you NEED to vote your own question(s) up by having multiple accounts. That’s the only way you can get questions answered on a voting system designed for internal use at Google.

  21. Great! I will wait for the new videos published on Youtube’s Google Webmaster Help. I might ask several questions too on moderator page.

  22. How are Google going to ensure that they are around as a commercial organisation for at least the next 50 years, as life without Google would be more frustrating than life with Google ? (coming from a search user and a search engine optimizer perspective)

  23. By the way, there’s a problem with Google Moderator and HTML tags – I tried to enter some HTML tags which are in HTML 5 as examples, but they got stripped out.

    A preview function would be very useful to stop this happening.

    Anyway, so the question “Does Google recognise any new HTML 5 features? Tags like etc have semantic meanings which could potentially be useful to an algorithm.” originally included the HTML 5 tags “aside” and “nav” (though it was meant to apply to all new HTML 5 tags with semantic meanings). People are probably going to vote it down due to the fact it doesn’t make as much sense with those bits stripped out. Sigh.

  24. “Can social spammers using your identity harm your websites rank?”

    Case in hand, my personal portfolio site’s rank has been dropping fast, a backlink search has shown me that a number of norwegien and Japanese spammers have been posting spam comments using my name and website link. The problem seems to be accelerating as well.

  25. on the way with my own question 🙂

    thanks!

  26. I’m creating a new business called “take out your competitors” by sending single themed anchor text from hacked and or junk directories.

    How long is this effect that is working so wonderfully now going to continue so I can plan out how long I’ve got to make hey with it?

  27. When is Google Moderator going to join web apps of the 90’s and have something other than the ability to move to the previous 10 questions or the next 10? I, for one, get tired of going through hundreds of questions 10 at a time just to reach the newest.

  28. Hi Matt

    I know this is not the right post to ask this question. But i am very much troubled with this query and could not found any satisfactory answer on the net. I will be obliged if you could answer my question –

    “Does search engines treat blogs and website in same manner? If the answer is no then How they come to know that this is a blog and that is a website. ” Technically they both have html and crawlers reads the source code then what is the difference.

    Sincerely,

    Vibha Raj

  29. Hi Matt,

    The question I have is as follows:

    Does Google have any plans to incorporate social updates/conversations (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, etc.) in the search results? Or even some sort of separate section listed as “social”?

    Thanks! :o)

  30. The reason I posted here is because you posted this link on twitter and I was one of the first people here so all I saw was this form right below the request. I did not even realize I had come to your site I thought this form was just where you asked the question. Now it is obvious but when you first posted that link in twitter it was not.

  31. Why isnt google able to stop ranking sites using blackhat methods, especially sites promoted with forum spamming tools such as xrummer?

  32. I will definatley be going through all the questions voting. So everyone is allowed to post a question? Personally I have a few about building links if this even on a small level is ok. Sorry I will save it for the video quesitons:)

  33. I posted a question and got the response “Your question looks similar to some questions already submitted. Please vote for the question you think is best.”

    I have not found a qusetion similar to mine:
    “Do “spammy” links on parked domains and questionable sites purchased by a competitor as negative SEO or “Google Bowling” hurt my site’s ranking? If they do, is there a method for a webmaster to report these links not under their control?

  34. Off topic

    I just got this email from google UK about ‘The Export Box’ (whatever that is). The first feature ‘landing pages for specific search terms’, sounds like spam to me – spam made by google, hmm? Link from email http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/exportadviser/get-exporting/#utm_source=awo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=kdms

    Extract from google email


    Incentives to help you get started

    The Export Box from Applied Language Solutions

    If you’re thinking of expanding into foreign markets but you aren’t sure where to begin, Export Box provides you with everything needed to begin exporting – all in one place!

    In purchasing the Export Box for the package price of £3,000 you will get:

    * A translated website, built as landing pages for specific search terms
    * Keywords and adverts researched and designed for target country in target language

  35. Mohamed Shawky

    Hello
    I am Mohamed from Egypt , I am asking about that some websites would do very well in google and after 2 months or 3 months they got dropped and appear only for the search term http://www.domain.com , and after a month or two they come back again , we need to understand what`s wrong ? if these websites were penalized then why would they come back again ? and if they werenot penalized then why were they dropped from the begining ?

    I hope you answer me Mr.Matt as this puzzle is going to make something wrong with my brain , lol , it`s really confusing and I cant figure out what`s wrong because I follow google TOS and guidelines …

    Thanks so much Matt !!! 🙂

  36. I can’t see http://moderator.appspot.com/ on my firefox. I am running linux.

  37. Cutts, are you gonna answer these questions or did you already and I’m just not seeing it?

    Thanks.

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