Search Engine Roundtable

Google's Future In 20 Minutes By Larry Page

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:20:00 -0400

Google's CEO, Larry Page, presented the Zeitgeist 2012 in the UK a couple days ago. The presentation was titled "Beyond Today" and gives a glimpse into what direction Google is headed.

Google published the 20 minute speech on YouTube for you all to watch. I have also posted the transcript below:

Yes, of course he is wearing the Google Glass but I can't figure out what is with all the green?

Here is the transcript:

0:07>>Larry Page: If you guys are going to take my picture, I will take your picture, too.
0:12Let me share that with the whole company. Okay. Done.
0:23So, it was a great session. A little bit of a hard act to follow. I was -- I'm upset if
0:30I have to follow Peter. So thank you, Peter. I think that these are obviously the Google
0:37Glass. It is only "glass" because it is only on one side. But it is still in a bit of an
0:44early stage, but I'm really excited to be able to have one and to have it working. And
0:50it was pretty exciting. I just talked to our London Googlers, too,
0:55and I showed it to them. They were very excited about it.
0:57It doesn't yet show me all of your names, but I'm really glad that you are all here.
1:04I think that -- And I really want to thank everyone for coming and for spending time
1:09with us. It seems like you're all having a good time.
1:13Partnership is really important to Google. We've been a company that's had a lot of partners
1:17and lot of business relationships. I think that's been really important to Google's success,
1:22and I hope it's important to all of you as well and to your success.
1:26So it has been about a year since I became CEO again, and I wanted to share a little
1:31bit of an update on what's happened and what my priorities have been and what we've been
1:35doing. So I think the -- the first thing, I'd say
1:40is that it is easy to think about technology as being relatively static. You know, Google
1:45is a search engine. We've done these various things for a long time and not much changes.
1:51But that's not really what's happening. I think that the pace of change is really accelerating.
1:56And, you know, there is more devices being sold every day than there ever has been. People
2:01are more interested in them. They're spending more money and more time using their phones
2:06and everything else. And I think it's really exciting to see that
2:09everyone in the world is going to get a smartphone now. And for many people, for most people
2:15probably in the world, it's going to be their first computer.
2:18And it is really -- you know, it is not a question of "if" now, it is just a question
2:21of "when." You know you are going to have a smartphone and it is going to be connected
2:25to the Internet and you are going to be able to do amazing, amazing things.
2:29Now, it's hard -- even those of us in the industry, it is pretty hard for us to predict
2:35what's going to happen 5, 10, 15, 25 years from now.
2:41We do know things will look really different, and it's -- again, it is easy to -- it is
2:46easy to forget that. I don't think five years from now I'm going to be carrying a phone
2:50where if I drop it, it is going to splatter into pieces because it is basically a thin
2:54piece of glass. I'm sure that's not going to be the case.
2:58So there's going to be a lot of change in ways that really affect us and will really
3:02change our lives. Now, for Google, you know, what should we
3:08be doing? We should really be focusing on really important things that are going to
3:11matter a lot. And we took a look at what we were doing and
3:16we thought, Well, we have an awful lot of products, some of which people don't seem
3:19to care that much about. So we went through and we -- we went through kind of a painful
3:24process where we shut down or closed over 30 different things.
3:28And we also made our products visually better. You know, we made them much more coherent.
3:35And I think that -- you know, I think that it's really important that when you use technology,
3:43you know, you don't see our organization chart or you don't see all of our different products.
3:47It just works together beautifully. And we believe technology should really do
3:52the hard work for you, rather than you having to do the hard work. And that means that,
3:57you know, it should handle communication, discovery, memory, you know, things like that
4:02that might be difficult for you. And that means that you all can do what makes
4:06you happiest, which is living and loving and really enjoying your life.
4:10Now, let me talk about some of our areas of focus as a company.
4:15The first one, for the last year, has been Google+ which is our social efforts, and people
4:22are a bit confused about this. I'd say that we think it's really important that when you're
4:26using Google, you be able to easily share things. You know, I just shared the photo
4:31of all of you with the company, and I did that in a few seconds. And the reason I was
4:35able to do that is using Google+. You know, I had circles set up for the company, and
4:41that sharing was consistent. And, you know, I think that we've had tremendous
4:48success with that, you know, around things like photos. You know, you can take a photo
4:51now also on your Android phone and share it and have it uploaded automatically and share
4:56it really easily. And, you know, we have over 170 million people
5:00now that are, you know, participating in that, that have upgraded, you know, of Google+.
5:05And the other part where people are a little bit confused about what we're doing, that's
5:09the social spine of Google. That means everything in Google gets better by being able to share
5:14and have identity and things like that. The other part of Google+ is the product itself,
5:21where you can follow people, you can read your stream and so on, and that's a social
5:26network and it's starting from a growth -- it started from zero people and it's grown a
5:32lot and it's grown much faster than any other social network ever has.
5:38But it's starting from zero, it's not starting from Google on day one.
5:41You know, I have -- I think I have over 2 million followers now on Google+. There's
5:46a whole bunch of people with over a million people. And we've been really excited about
5:51the growth there, and the pace at which it's growing, but it will take some time. We're
5:56starting it from scratch. So let me talk a little bit about search,
6:00too. I think that's a really big area of focus for us, and it's an area where, you know,
6:05I think if you used Google from five years ago, you'll be astounded at how bad it is.
6:11Or how bad it was, right? And, you know, search has gotten a lot better.
6:16You don't always see it because we change it every day and we try not to distract you
6:20too much with changes, but when I think -- one of the things I'm most proud of that we did
6:26recently is that I have a friend at Google called Ben Smith, and that's a very common
6:34name in the U.S. You know, Smith's the most common last name. And it's very -- it was
6:40difficult to find him before. But now actually with Google+ and with our understanding of
6:45all that, you know, when I search for Ben Smith, I actually get the Ben Smith that I
6:49know and he actually appears in the search box and there's a little picture of him. And
6:54if that's not the Ben Smith I want, I can, you know, delete him and put a different one
6:59in. But I'm actually searching for that person
7:02rather than the string, the combination of letters. And that's a really big deal for
7:07Google and it's a really important thing. We don't want to just do that with people.
7:14Also maybe in the last week or so, we released this thing called the Knowledge Graph, or
7:22Knowledge Panels, we're calling them, and those actually give you -- if you search for
7:26"Tesla" now, "Tesla," then you get the car and you get the scientist, and we know lots
7:34of things about them. So, you know, if you search about, you know,
7:38a different -- a lake or something like that, we'll know the depth of the lake.
7:43And what we're really trying to do is to really get to the point where we can represent knowledge
7:47and we can do much more complicated types of queries. What are the 20 deepest lakes?
7:53What are the highest market cap companies? Or whatever. Things like that where we really
7:57understand what that query means, rather than just give you, you know, the exact text that
8:03matches best on some Web page that's somewhere. And so we're really looking at synthesizing
8:08knowledge and I'm incredibly excited about that.
8:12Now, search also is not just about finding things. It's really about taking actions,
8:17and, you know, when you're doing searches, a lot of times you want to actually do things.
8:22You don't want to just look at 10 different links but you want to actually buy something
8:27or you want to book a flight or you want to know what the weather is, you know, right
8:32there. And we've been doing a lot of this work over
8:35the years. You know, a lot of it requires deep partnerships with probably many people
8:39in the room to make sure that we have access to the right kind of data, the right business
8:44models, to make all that work. But ultimately in search we really want you
8:47to be able to take actions. And that's even more important on mobile,
8:52right? Where you have very limited screen space, you have the limited ability to do
8:57things. It's really important that you be able to
9:00get directions, for example. We've worked very hard on maps. You know, on your phone,
9:06you can get directions right from your current location or you can pay easily for something
9:10using your mobile phone, by using NFC payments which we're really excited about.
9:16Now, you know, in talking about mobile, I think that -- you know, I remember actually
9:24I visited our London office many, many years ago and they actually had a closet in our
9:29London office where we do a lot of our mobile development and they had a closet full of
9:34100 phones. And the reason why we had that closet is that's what was necessary, actually,
9:40to make our phone software work. And at the time, it actually didn't work very well. I
9:46don't know if you remember using a phone, you know, five, seven, eight years ago, but,
9:51you know, you were lucky to be able to -- you could make a phone call but that was about
9:55it. You know, you couldn't get maps or directions or upload your photos or anything like that.
10:00And we were really, really frustrated by that, and that's why we developed Android.
10:06And, you know, if you think back, you know, at the time when we realized that, it wasn't
10:10obvious that, you know, there was going to be a good way of making a software platform
10:15for phones that would get adopted by everyone and all that, but Android's really on fire
10:19now, which I probably don't have to tell you all, and it's very, very exciting.
10:26It's a big area of focus for us, obviously. Now, you know, one of the things -- I'm talking
10:32about having a really, you know, integrated, beautiful experience. You know, on Chrome
10:37on Android, you can actually get all of your tabs that you see on your desktop. If you're
10:42signed in, you're logged in with us, you can get all the tabs you have open that you have
10:48on your desktop and you can hit the "Back" button and it will go back or you can get
10:52all the things that you have available there and it's just an amazing, beautiful, seamless
10:56experience. And that's really what we're aiming for, as
10:59a company. Now, another example of that is Google Play,
11:06which we recently released, you know, where you can basically have any movies, books,
11:10apps, or games, all accessible from the web or your phone and you don't have to sync.
11:16You know, you don't have to use cables, you don't have to download anything, it just works.
11:21And that's, again, really what we're -- what we're aiming for.
11:23Now, you know, I talked a little bit about focusing the company, and, you know, I think
11:30that I want to talk a little bit about making some big bets.
11:34And, you know, we always try to concentrate on the long term, what we're doing for the
11:39long term, and, you know, I think that, you know, many of the things we started up that
11:45are really big now, like Chrome, were seen as kind of crazy when we launched them.
11:50And so how do we decide what to do? What -- you know, how do we decide what's really important
11:54to work on? Well, I like to call it the toothbrush test.
11:59So the toothbrush test is: Do you use it as often as you use your toothbrush? For most
12:04people, I guess that's twice a day. Raise your hands. Twice a day? Yeah. Okay. Most
12:09people. So I think, you know, we really want things
12:13like that, and I think things like Gmail, obviously you use much more than twice a day,
12:20and YouTube, you know, I think that those things are amazing. And I think that -- you
12:26know, when we at things like YouTube, people thought, "Oh, you guys are never going to
12:31make money with that. You bought it for $1.4 billion. You're totally crazy." And we're
12:36reasonably crazy, but it was a good bet. And we've actually been doubling revenue every
12:43year on YouTube for four years, and actually if you're doubling things, it starts to add
12:48up pretty quickly, even no matter where you start from.
12:54So I think that's a good example of the -- how sort of our philosophy is. That we see things
13:00that people use a lot, that they're going to -- that are going to be really important
13:04to them, and we think that usually you can make money from those things over time. You
13:08know, a well-run technology business can be monetized over time.
13:14And I think also having the courage to kind of fail on these things. You know, our AdSense,
13:21which is how, you know, we help other partners monetize their Web sites, that was the result
13:27of a failed experiment to understand the web. So the way in which we target advertisements
13:33to Web pages was -- was a failed result to better understand the web and to actually
13:39improve search. So I think you really got to be prepared to
13:42try ambitious things, which really leads me to my next point.
13:48So I was a student at the University of Michigan, and I went to this sort of summer leadership
13:54course, and their slogan was to have a healthy disregard for the impossible. A healthy disregard
14:01for the impossible. And I think that's a really good slogan.
14:06And that's really stuck with me in all those years. And I think that, you know, it sounds
14:11kind of nuts, but it's often easier to make progress when you're really ambitious, and
14:16the reason is that you actually don't have any competition because no one else is willing
14:21to try those things, and you also get all the best people because the best people want
14:26to work on the most ambitious things. And, you know, I've been really struck by
14:32this over the years. One of the projects I wanted to talk about was we have this project
14:36for self-driving cars. You know, and that seems really crazy. You're like, how can a
14:41car possibly drive itself? You know, how's that ever going to work?
14:46And, you know, we've had a team working on that and we've driven over 200,000 miles now
14:52with no incidents. And it's really amazing to ride in one of
14:57these cars. It's just almost a life-changing experience. You sit down, you drive through
15:01the parking lot, and you're like "Why am I driving," you know?
15:04It's just an amazing, amazing experience. And think about -- you know, I have young
15:08children. I'm sure many of you do as well. Think about your children. By the time that
15:12they're old enough to drive, there's no reason we can't have technology that helps them -- teaches
15:17them to drive and learn all the things they need to know. And that's like almost, I think,
15:22the leading cause of death, actually, for kids as they learn to drive. I mean, it's
15:26a big deal. So I think, you know, my point was that I
15:30think in technology, if we take some ambitious bets, we really have an amazing ability to
15:37transform people's lives. Yesterday I was in New York City with Mayor
15:44Bloomberg and we announced this effort -- you know, they have a new technology school going
15:50into Manhattan onto Roosevelt Island, and I think that's really exciting thing, and
15:57Google contributed space to incubate this new school, which is Cornell and Technion.
16:05And the reason why I think that's important is I think that there's tremendous things
16:09that are possible in the world through technology and we have relatively few people working
16:14on those things. We're not developing a lot of new scientists
16:17and engineers. It's probably, you know, well under 1% of the population in most developed
16:25countries. And I think a lot of our progress really comes from those people and their partnerships
16:30with businesses and other things to really make things happen.
16:37So I think, you know, I'm trying to give you a very positive world view, but I think, you
16:40know, anything you can imagine probably is doable, right? You just have to imagine it
16:45and work on it. And things that we thought were almost impossible
16:50-- so we were interested in machine translation. There is services on the web. We had licensed
16:56one which could translate between different languages. And obviously for search, you know,
17:01if you can't -- if the information's not in your language, we can't find it for you.
17:06And most information is not in your language, right? This is sort of a -- by definition.
17:12And so we thought, well, it would be great if we could provide search results for any
17:16language for any query, and so we really focused on that problem. And we focused on it and
17:22we developed Google Translate, and we found some machine learning researchers and we said,
17:27"Do you think you can translate, you know, between any languages and do it better than
17:31an average human translator?" And they said -- they laughed at us, and said,
17:35"No, we can't possibly do that." But they actually were willing to try.
17:39And, you know, six years later, we can translate between 64 languages, and it's amazing, actually.
17:49We're better -- in many languages, we're better than an average human translating. We do it
17:54instantly and for free. And between those 64 languages, we can translate between any
17:59two of the languages, so we have something like 4,000 languages we can translate between.
18:06And so I'm just trying to give you -- I guess I'm tremendously optimistic that whatever
18:11things we try to challenge, whatever challenges we try to take on, we can solve with a little
18:17bit of concerted effort, and some good technology. And I think that's a really exciting place
18:22to be in the world. So I think we want more people working on
18:26it, we want to have more ambitious goals, and I think with that, we could easily double
18:32kind of human progress and the rate at which we're developing.
18:37So I think our job is to really make the world better, and, you know, I think that the world
18:42has enough resources to really provide a good quality of life to everyone. You know, we
18:48have enough raw materials and things like that. I think we need to get better organized
18:54and really move a lot faster and really make -- work on making that a reality, really by
19:00developing amazing technology that helps the world get better organized, that helps people
19:04be more productive, and I think that's an amazing, amazing thing to see happen.
19:10So I think we take this responsibility really seriously and thank you.
19:15[ Applause ]

Forum discussion at Google+.

Google AdWords Account Audit

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:13:00 -0400

Did you know Google does AdWords audits on any AdWords management company they feel like?

According to the AdWords third-party policy, Google has the right to do these audits since April 2011. Google said:

Any third party who sells Google AdWords may be audited at Googleâs discretion. Audits may be based on complaints that are received by Google or may be initiated by Google. Google may initiate audits beginning on April 1st, 2011, to give third parties sufficient time to prepare.

I like it! But it is a lot of work on the AdWords consultants side of things?

A WebmasterWorld thread has one AdWords consultant who was audited about 9 months ago. He said it was a very easy process where he had to "fill in an online form and attached a sample client report for them to review. " He had about 2-3 weeks to fill out the form to be in compliance with AdWords' terms. Then a couple weeks after filling out and submitting the form, Google responded that all was good and he was in compliance.

Have you been audited by Google for the campaigns you manage for third-party companies? Is it as bad as IRS audits?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Scholar Redesign Removes Key Feature

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:02:00 -0400

Google Scholar recently was completely redesigned to match the new modern Google look.

Part of that means some features have changed, were removed or are hard to find.

One complaint in the Google Web Search Forums is about a key feature being removed.

In the old advanced search settings you were able to limit or filter your search by "search only articles in the following subject areas" but that feature seems completely gone in the new interface.

Here are screen shots:

Old Interface:

New Interface:

Google has yet to confirm if it is completely gone, coming back soon or hidden somewhere where no one can find it.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Forums.

Yahoo Axis: Browse & Search The Web

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 08:47:00 -0400

Last night Yahoo shocked the world by introducing something that looks cool, useful and unique - Yahoo Axis.

Yahoo Axis is a browser/extension/search tool that changes the way people explore and search the web. The best way to describe it is to show you some videos.

How It Works:

Here are some commercials:

Pretty cool, don't you think?

Will you use it? That is another question.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Places Updates PO Box Policy

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 08:36:00 -0400

Vanessa from Google announced a new PO Box policy in the Google Places Help forums.

The new policy forbids you to place your PO Box information in both the address 1 or 2 fields. Previously, if you had a PO Box, Google recommended you put it in the address 2 field - that is no longer the case.

Vanessa explained:

As it stands today, we allow users to list their P.O. Box in Address Line 2. This sends your listing for manual review to our teams (thatâs why you might see your listingâs status as âPendingâ), who then verify the accuracy of Address Line 1.
Because Google Maps listings should be reflective of a businessâs physical location, and mail receiving locations donât fit this description, weâve made a change to this policy. P.O. Boxes are no longer permitted in either Address Line 1 or 2.
Now, we know many businesses can only receive the verification postcard at a P.O. Box. If you are one of those businesses, or if you have a P.O. Box in the address field for an already verified listing, please see these next steps:

So what do you do, it depends on your situation. Here they are:

(A) Have a verified listing containing a P.O. Box?

Make sure your listing remains active:
1) Sign in at places.google.com
2) Select âEditâ
3) Remove the term âP.O. Boxâ from the address fields
4) Save your changes

If this change requires reverification, and you canât verify using the available options, please visit this contact form and select the following options:

Select: I tried PIN verification for a single listing â' Yes, the listing already appears owner-verified

B) Are you setting up a brand new Places listing?

Try creating and verifying the listing using your physical location. If you donât meet customers at your address, make sure you hide your business location. Places may give you the option to verify by phone.

If you cannot verify using the available options, youâll need to request a manual verification using this troubleshooter path: Select: I tried PIN verification for a single listing â' No, I am attempting to verify my listing --> The status is not Needs Action --> Postcard --> Yes

Once you submit a request via the contact form, please give the Google Places support team up to a week to get back in touch with you via e-mail.

Note: Users with a âP.O. Boxâ in Address Line 1 or 2 should have received an e-mail by now explaining this policy change and next steps (via the e-mail associated with your Places account).

Forum discussion at Google Places Help.

Image credit to ShutterStock for PO box

SEOs & Googlers As LEGO

Barry Schwartz — Thu, 24 May 2012 08:17:00 -0400

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 23, 2012

Barry Schwartz — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:00:00 -0400

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Win/Win: Block Unwanted Links In Google Webmaster Tools
For years, webmasters and SEOs have been asking Google for a way to specify which links they do not want Google to count (positive or negative) towards their rankings. The concept is simple. You go to your link report in Google Webmaster Tools and have an action button that says "don't trust this link"...
Anti Penguin Link Building, Really?
There is an ad running on this site that pitches "Anti Penguin Link Building," well Penguin is spelled Pinguin in the ad (maybe German). Have we learned nothing over the years? Seriously pitching Anti Penguin Link Building services? Really?
Careful What You Search For When Using So.cl
A few days ago, Microsoft quietly launched their own social network named So.cl. Yea, it is a lot like Google+, Facebook and all of them in a Microsoft wrapper. I am not doing a review here...
Competitors Spamming? Google Says Report Them
Matt Cutts of Google published a video on what to do if your competitors are spamming Google and benefiting from it. Matt Cutts talks about the various ways to report spam to Google...
How Does The Google Moog Synthesizer Work?
Today on Google is a fancy interactive logo for the would be 78th birthday of Bob Moog. Moog invented the first electric music machine known as the Moog Synthesizer. He revolutionized music with this device when he introduced it in 1964 at a convention...
Symbolism Of Google's Page Green Shirt With Green Mic?
Am I the only one who thinks it is weird that Google's CEO, Larry Page decided to color coordinate his bright green t-shirt with a bright green microphone foam ball cover? I would not notice anything

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

SEO Legos: This is awesome stuff from +aaron wall…, Barry Schwartz - Google+
Can AJAX "Show more" become "Show all" for bots?, WebmasterWorld
Icelandic IP range localized to Russia, Google Webmaster Help
Places Troubleshooter dead ends for "At a Glance" problems, Google Places Help

Win/Win: Block Unwanted Links In Google Webmaster Tools

Barry Schwartz — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:31:00 -0400

For years, webmasters and SEOs have been asking Google for a way to specify which links they do not want Google to count (positive or negative) towards their rankings.

The concept is simple. You go to your link report in Google Webmaster Tools and have an action button that says "don't trust this link" or something like it. Google will then take that as a signal to not use that link as part of their link graph and ranking algorithm.

The reason webmasters and SEOs want it is because they want an easy way to remove any negative links that may be hurting their sites from rankings.

But do SEOs really want it?

What I can't understand is why hasn't Google released it yet? It is a great way for Google to do mass spam reporting by webmasters and SEOs without calling it spam reporting. You will have all these webmasters rush after a penalty to call out which links they feel are hurting them. Google can take that data to back up their algorithms to on links they already know are spam but also find new links that they might not have caught.

That is a win situation for Google. They will find more spam this way than via a basic spam report tool.

It may be perceived as a win for SEOs and webmasters, because they can easily discount links that might be hurting them.

But is it really a win? I have no doubt that most of the links a webmaster decides to discount would not have been marked as spammy by Google already. So who is really benefiting?

You go through links, links that might be positively helping your site and discount them and then hand over the reason why you want to discount them to Google.

I really do not see why Google has not released this functionality yet? Am I missing something? Who cares if it really discounts things, Google would be collecting tons of data.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Anti Penguin Link Building, Really?

Barry Schwartz — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:15:00 -0400

There is an ad running on this site that pitches "Anti Penguin Link Building," well Penguin is spelled Pinguin in the ad (maybe German).

Have we learned nothing over the years? Seriously pitching Anti Penguin Link Building services? Really?

I know the advertiser is going to hate me for this but I just find it incredibly frustrating. Yes, Penguin is hot now, people who are hit or afraid of being hit would latch onto the ad. It is an ad that will likely get clicks on to learn more but it is the wrong message to the SEO industry.

Link building is done by most SEO companies. To be honest, the rational behind building links naturally is somewhat of an oxymoron. To build links naturally, you should never need to ask for a link - let alone pay someone to get you links.

Anyway, I can't blame the advertiser. I bet the click through rate on ads like this do well. But I wish we didn't have them.

Forum discussion on my Google+ page.

Careful What You Search For When Using So.cl

Barry Schwartz — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:04:00 -0400

A few days ago, Microsoft quietly launched their own social network named So.cl.

Yea, it is a lot like Google+, Facebook and all of them in a Microsoft wrapper. I am not doing a review here, Danny did one at MarketingLand.

One of the features is you can share your searches done on Bing or other default search providers directly with your friends in your timeline.

Sean Carlos shared a picture on Google+ of one of his "friends" timelines showing a recent search done on Flickr for the term [nude].

Yea, with the new Bing you can also share your searches but you need to do it explicitly. I think this is more passive and by default, your searches will show up if you are searching through So.cl?

Just be careful what you search for within these networks.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Competitors Spamming? Google Says Report Them

Barry Schwartz — Wed, 23 May 2012 08:52:00 -0400

Matt Cutts of Google published a video on what to do if your competitors are spamming Google and benefiting from it.

Matt Cutts talks about the various ways to report spam to Google.

He also says that webspam doesn't last forever and algorithm updates like Panda, Penguin and so on are examples of updates that tackle these issues. He also said Google takes manual action of spam reports when needed.

The good part of this video is that if you have a client who is complaining their competitor is ranking above you and you know they are spamming - you can show it to your client and say, which route do you want to go. Short term gain or long term plan.

Here is the video:

Yea, of course Google wants you to to report spam to them.

Here is the transcript:

0:00 Today's question comes from Hood River, where lisawilliams
0:04 wants to know, "White hat search marketers read and
0:07 follow Google guidelines.
0:09 What should they tell clients whose competitors use black
0:11 hat techniques such as doorway pages and whom continue to
0:15 rank as a result of those techniques?"
0:17 So first and foremost, I would say do a spam report.
0:20 Because if you're violating Google's guidelines in terms
0:22 of cloaking or sneaky JavaScript redirects, buying
0:25 links, doorway pages, keyword stuffing, all those kinds of
0:28 things, we do want to know about it.
0:30 So you can do a spam report.
0:32 That's private.
0:33 You can also stop by Google's Webmaster forum, and that's
0:36 more public.
0:37 But you can do a spam report there.
0:39 You can sort of say, hey, I saw this content.
0:41 It seems like it's ranking higher than
0:42 it should be ranking.
0:44 Here's a real business, and it's being outranked by this
0:46 spammer, those kinds of things.
0:48 There are people who keep an eye on that forum, not just
0:51 Google employees, but also sort of
0:52 superusers or bionic posters.
0:55 And they can also pass those reports on.
0:57 So there are a lot of different ways to report
0:59 specific incidents of spam.
1:01 The other thing that I would say is if you look at the
1:03 history of which businesses have done well over time,
1:07 you'll find the sorts of sites and the sorts of businesses
1:10 that are built to stand the test of time.
1:14 If someone is using a technique that is a gimmick or
1:19 something that's like the SEO fad of the day, that's a
1:22 little less likely to really work well a
1:24 few years from now.
1:25 So a lot of the times, you'll see people just chasing after,
1:28 OK, I'm going to use guest books, or I'm going to use
1:30 link wheels or whatever.
1:32 And then they find, oh, that stopped working as well.
1:34 And sometimes it's because of broad algorithmic
1:36 changes like Panda.
1:38 Sometimes it's because of specific web spam targeted
1:41 algorithms. But it can also be the case that we can crack
1:45 down on even large companies.
1:47 If you go back and look at the New York Times articles about
1:51 JC Penney or Overstock, we're willing to take action on
1:54 anything that we consider to be a violation of our
1:56 guidelines.
1:57 So my short answer is go ahead and do a spam report.
2:00 You can also report it in the forums. But it's definitely
2:03 the case that if you're taking those higher risks, that can
2:07 come back and bite you.
2:08 And that can have a material impact.
2:10 So I would recommend that people avoid going with the
2:13 black hat techniques.
2:15 And we're happy to hear, we're happy to get feedback either
2:17 at conferences, on Twitter, online, blogs, forums, if
2:21 you're seeing sites that are prospering and are using black
2:24 hat techniques.
2:25 Now, it's possible that they have some low-quality links,
2:27 and there are some links that people aren't aware of that we
2:30 see that are actually high quality.
2:32 But we're happy to get spam reports.
2:33 We're happy to dig into them.
2:35 And then we'll try to find either new algorithms to try
2:37 to rank the things more appropriately in the future.
2:40 Or we're certainly willing to take manual action on spam if
2:43 it's egregious or if it violates our guidelines.
2:46 We have a manual web spam team that is willing to respond to
2:49 those spam reports.
2:50 So thanks very much.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Image credit to ShutterStock for kid pointing finger

How Does The Google Moog Synthesizer Work?

Barry Schwartz — Wed, 23 May 2012 08:19:00 -0400

Today on Google is a fancy interactive logo for the would be 78th birthday of Bob Moog. Moog invented the first electric music machine known as the Moog Synthesizer.

He revolutionized music with this device when he introduced it in 1964 at a convention.

To celebrate his life, he died in 2005 at the age of 71, Google has created a very cool interactive logo. You can virtually play the Moog Synthesizer on Google's home page.

Google has a detailed explanation of how to operate. Here is that picture:

You can clearly make at the Google letters in the logo, which make it a Google Doodle.

Plus, you can record your music, play it over and share it with friends on Google+ or via a short URL.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help & Google+.

Symbolism Of Google's Page Green Shirt With Green Mic?

Barry Schwartz — Wed, 23 May 2012 08:05:00 -0400

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 22, 2012

Barry Schwartz — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:00:00 -0400

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google's Cutts: Linking To A Few Bad Web Sites Won't Hurt You
Yesterday, the Google Webmaster Help team posted another video by Matt Cutts - this one was named What happens if I link to a good page that later becomes spammy...
Pause Your Ads To Rotate Your Google AdWords Ads
Earlier this month, Google announced they will stop allowing AdWords ads from rotating beyond 30-days. In the past, you were able to set your ads to rotate on based on "optimize for clicks," "optimize for conversions," or "rotate evenly...
Name Servers Listed In Google. Server Or Google Bug?
A WebmasterWorld thread has one webmaster claiming Google has indexed and is listing their name server address instead of their web address in the Google search results. He said he noticed search referrals from NS2.domain.co.uk versus his own domain name...
Google Launches Webmaster Academy
Google has launched a new resource named Webmaster Academy. This is a resource to teach small businesses the basic of how Google search works...
Baha'i Religion Upset With Google Knowledge Graph
Those six million people who are part of the Baha'i Faith are a bit upset with Google over their new Knowledge Graph. One Baha'i or Bahu'lh follower posted in the Google Web Search Help forums explaining the issue...
Facebook Cooler & Snacks
Geoffrey Shenk who currently works at Kenshoo but previously worked at Google via DoubleClick visited the Facebook offices and took a lot of pictures. He posted the pictures on Google+ (yea) & here i

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Microsoft quietly launches So.cl social network, WebmasterWorld
Turkish Youth Week has started (doodle), Google Blogoscoped Forum

Google's Cutts: Linking To A Few Bad Web Sites Won't Hurt You

Barry Schwartz — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:24:00 -0400

Yesterday, the Google Webmaster Help team posted another video by Matt Cutts - this one was named What happens if I link to a good page that later becomes spammy?

In short, Google's Matt Cutts said, you should not worry about it. He qualifies that by saying that if you link to a ton of bad sites, then yes - it is an issue. But if you have a few bad or dead links then it is not something you should worry about.

Here is the video:

This reminds me of when Ask Jeeves became a porn star. In short, Ask retired Jeeves in 2006 and made a web site for his retirement at jeevesretirement.com/desk. They intentionally or un-intentionally did not renew the domain name a couple years later and a really nasty adult site put content on it. Yet, Ask.com and all these other publications - good sources - linked to the domain name. Those sites did not suffer from linking to this one bad site.

Here is the video transcript:

0:00 SPEAKER 1: Today's question comes from Toronto.
0:03 MrTVTL has a pretty long question: Site A links to Site
0:08 B because Site B has content that would be useful to Site
0:11 A's end users, and Google indexes the appropriate page.
0:15 After the page is indexed, site B's content changes and
0:18 becomes spammy, so does Site A incur a penalty in this case?
0:23 OK, so let's make it concrete.
0:24 Suppose I link to a great site.
0:26 I love it, and so I link to it.
0:28 I think it's good for my users.
0:30 Google finds that page.
0:31 Everybody's happy.
0:32 Users are happy.
0:34 Life is good.
0:35 Except now, that site that I linked to went away.
0:39 It didn't pay its domain registration or whatever, and
0:41 now becomes maybe an expired domain porn site, and it's
0:44 doing some really nasty stuff.
0:46 Am I going to be penalized for that?
0:49 In general, no.
0:50 It's not the sort of thing where just having a few stale
0:52 links that happen to link to spam are going to get you into
0:54 problems. But if a vast majority of your site just
0:58 happens to link to a whole bunch of really spammy porn or
1:01 off-topic stuff, then that can start to affect your site's
1:04 reputation.
1:05 We look at the overall nature of the web, and certain amount
1:09 of links are always going stale, going 404, pointing to
1:13 information that can change or that can become spammy.
1:15 And so it's not the case that just because you have one link
1:18 that happens to go to bad content because the content
1:20 has changed since you made that link, that you're going
1:23 to run into an issue.
1:24 At the same time, we are able to suss out in a lot of ways
1:28 when people are trying to link to abusive or manipulative or
1:32 deceptive or malicious sites.
1:34 So in the general case, I wouldn't
1:37 worry about it at all.
1:38 If you are trying to hide a whole bunch of spammy links,
1:41 then that might be the sort of thing that you
1:42 need to worry about.
1:43 But just a particular site that happened to go bad, and
1:47 you don't know about every single site, and you don't
1:49 re-check every single link on your site, that's not the sort
1:51 of thing that I would worry about.
1:53 Hope that helps.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Image credit to ShutterStock for broken chain