Google’s Matt Cutts: We Don’t Use Twitter Or Facebook Social Signals To Rank Pages

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, released a video to answering the question, “are Facebook and Twitter signals part of the ranking algorithm?” The short answer was no.
Matt said that Google does not give any special treatment to Facebook or Twitter pages. They are in fact, currently, treated like any other page, according to Matt Cutts.

Matt then answered if Google does special crawling or indexing for these sites, such as indexing the number of likes or tweets a specific page has. Matt said Google does not do that right now. Why?

They have at one point and they were blocked. I believe Matt was referring to Google’s real time search deal expiring with Twitter. Matt explained that they put a lot of engineering time into it and then they were blocked and that work and effort was no longer useful. So for Google to put more engineering time into this and then be blocked again, it just doesn’t pay.

Another reason, Google is worried about crawling identity information at one point and then that information changes but Google doesn’t see the update until much later. Having outdated information can be harmful to some people.

However, Matt does add that he does see Google crawling, indexing and understanding more about identities on the web in the long term. He used our Danny Sullivan as an example, when Danny writes a story here, the site is authoritative, so it ranks well. But if Danny posts a comment on a forum or on Twitter, it would be useful for Google to know that an authority posted on a specific site and thus it should have more ranking weight in Google. 

While Google doesn’t do this now, we know they are indeed working on a solution for this.




Courtesy to : searchengineland

Google Crushes Yet Another Link Network For Violating Quality Guidelines

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, made an announcement on Twitter that action has been taken on another link network:


In a follow up to that tweet, Matt added in the form of a reply: “today France; Germany soon.” So expect news in the near future of a German link network being taken down.
That marks two more link networks to fall victim in Google’s ongoing crusade against websites that flagrantly violate Google’s guidelines.

Buzzea is one of the few to actually take offence to being called a link network and attempt to defend themselves. In a translated statement posted on their website they state that they “oppose this assertion since we never stopped wanting to keep the ethical side of sponsored articles focusing on quality and natural links created.”

However, in the same statement they also decided it was time to leave their business behind: “This marks the end of an adventure for our team but also the end of our collaboration with thousands of publisher sites, agencies and advertisers who have given us their trust.”

That trust Buzzea speaks of will likely result in a notification in Google Webmaster Tools very shortly, as well as a dip in rankings. It would be wise of anyone who participated in the link network to disavow the links immediately and stay far away from anything resembling a link network in the future.



Courtesy to : searchenginejournal

Google’s Matt Cutts Explains That Older Sites Won’t Always Keep Their Current Rankings

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a video  answering why some old sites may not have their rankings in Google last forever.

Matt Cutts explained that there are many old sites that are in the range of about 15 years old and while that is a good thing, some of these sites have their original design templates and have not done much to their sites to improve things over the years. They have never redesigned the site, never updated the user interfaces, never added new features for their users, etc. If you want to stay competitive, Matt said you need to take a “fresh” look at your site and keep upgrading, tweaking, improving the site and the user experience.

Otherwise, new sites that have a better user experience, may surpass you, as they should. In short, having an old domain doesn’t mean you will always keep the rankings you have today, tomorrow.

Courtesy to :  searchengineland