Aaron Wall at SEOBook commissioned an art project, which features a number of Lego art-style pictures of various Google employees and SEO celebrities, as well as some Google update-specific pieces. We already looked at Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt (who was portrayed again as an evil ice cream man). Here are the artist’s renditions of Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal, the two most recognizable faces behind the Penguin and Panda updates: Matt Cutts graphic by SEOBook.com Matt Cutts graphic by SEOBook.com Amit Singhal graphic by SEOBook.com Cutts and Singhal have both called the Penguin update a success. Here are the Penguin and Panda pics: Penguin Update graphic by SEOBook.com Panda Update graphic by SEOBook.com Even the old school Florida update made an appearance in the project: Florida Update graphic by SEOBook.com Then there’s the “Google Got Caught Pushing Illegal Drugs Update”: Google AdWords Drugs Update graphic by SEOBook.com I don’t think that was Google’s official name, but it refers to when Google had to forfeit $500 million as the result of a settlement with the Justice Department in relation to ads for Canadian pharmacies. The investigation behind this had authorities tracking a fugitive to Mexico, and he had advertised the unlawful sale of drugs using AdWords.

While there’s no doubt Johnny Kemp’s “Just Got Paid” is blasting through the speakers of just about every Facebook employee on the planet–especially Eduardo Saverin (are co-founders who make an absolute ton of cash from the Facebook IPO considered employees?)–some outside parties who have been down this same road have some advice for the newly rich: .ditto203525045170081792 {background: #000000 url(http://a0.twimg.com/images/themes/theme10/bg.gif) no-repeat;padding: 20px;}.ditto203525045170081792 a {color: #383838;}p.dittoTweet {background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 22px !important;font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;line-height: 30px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;}span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding: 12px 0px;height: 65px;}span.metadata span.author {line-height: 20px;color: #333;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}.tweet {font-size: 24px;}span.metadata span.author img {float: left;margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;}a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}span.timestamp {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;margin: 10px 0 0 0;line-height: 25px;}span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;}span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image: url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;}span.timestamp a.twitreply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;}span.timestamp a.twitreply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;}span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;}span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;}span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;}span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;}p.indent {margin-left: 20px;}.at-name a, .at-name a:visited, .at-name a:hover {color: #999;text-decoration: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: normal;}.dittodownarrow {width: 0;height: 0;border-left: 20px solid transparent;border-right: 20px solid transparent;border-top: 20px solid #EEE;margin: 0 0 0 73px;} !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id))}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Follow @mattcutts Matt Cutts @mattcutts Congrats FB folk! $$ advice: Most money managers overcharge. Use Vanguard. Stick to passive index funds. Balance stocks with bonds and i18n. 2 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto  Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite While that reads like Latin to someone like me, all of you venture capitalists and IPO folks understand Matt Cutts quite clearly. The thing is, his financial advice doesn’t stop there: .ditto203553057139736576 {background: #000000 url(http://a0.twimg.com/images/themes/theme10/bg.gif) no-repeat;padding: 20px;}.ditto203553057139736576 a {color: #383838;}p.dittoTweet {background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 22px !important;font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;line-height: 30px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;}span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding: 12px 0px;height: 65px;}span.metadata span.author {line-height: 20px;color: #333;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}.tweet {font-size: 24px;}span.metadata span.author img {float: left;margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;}a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}span.timestamp {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;margin: 10px 0 0 0;line-height: 25px;}span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;}span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image: url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;}span.timestamp a.twitreply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;}span.timestamp a.twitreply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;}span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;}span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;}span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;}span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;}p.indent {margin-left: 20px;}.at-name a, .at-name a:visited, .at-name a:hover {color: #999;text-decoration: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: normal;}.dittodownarrow {width: 0;height: 0;border-left: 20px solid transparent;border-right: 20px solid transparent;border-top: 20px solid #EEE;margin: 0 0 0 73px;} !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id))}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Follow @mattcutts Matt Cutts @mattcutts 129 words of financial advice from Scott Adams that everyone should read: http://t.co/2BRWaftH 14 minutes ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto  Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite The link goes to a Paul Farrell article on MarketWatch, which discusses Dilbert creator Scott Adams’ financial forumla. Even this is simple enough for a non-finance expert like me to understand: 1. Make a will 2. Pay off your credit cards 3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support 4. Fund your 401k to the maximum 5. Fund your IRA to the maximum 6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it 7. Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account 8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement 9. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio Those 129 words Cutts refers to belongs to Adams’ “Unified Theory of Everything Financial,” and while the advice is sound, do newly-minted billionaires really need to worry about paying off credit cards? Who knows, maybe Facebook employees are like professional athletes and will spend all of their money on anything shiny, only to wind up broke a few years after they get out of the business. If that’s the case–doubtful–then all of advice in the world isn’t going to make much of a difference. In other news, who knew Matt Cutts had groupies? Update: For those of you wondering why Cutts is giving advice to Facebook, the man himself explains: .ditto203571969193549827 {background: #000000 url(http://a0.twimg.com/images/themes/theme10/bg.gif) no-repeat;padding: 20px;}.ditto203571969193549827 a {color: #383838;}p.dittoTweet {background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 22px !important;font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;line-height: 30px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;}span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding: 12px 0px;height: 65px;}span.metadata span.author {line-height: 20px;color: #333;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}.tweet {font-size: 24px;}span.metadata span.author img {float: left;margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;}a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}span.timestamp {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;margin: 10px 0 0 0;line-height: 25px;}span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;}span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image: url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;}span.timestamp a.twitreply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;}span.timestamp a.twitreply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;}span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;}span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;}span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;}span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;}p.indent {margin-left: 20px;}.at-name a, .at-name a:visited, .at-name a:hover {color: #999;text-decoration: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: normal;}.dittodownarrow {width: 0;height: 0;border-left: 20px solid transparent;border-right: 20px solid transparent;border-top: 20px solid #EEE;margin: 0 0 0 73px;} !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id))}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Follow @mattcutts Matt Cutts @mattcutts @Areai51 @codepo8 I’ve run the gauntlet, so I consider it fair game to give that advice. 51 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto  Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite He also reminds folks that yes, stocks do indeed fluctuate, which has been known to affect the bottom line, which helps supprt his bond investment suggestion. Of course, in regards to Mark Zuckerberg, a downward fluctuation would mean his worth dropped a few million dollars.

Google uploaded a new Webmaster Help video from Matt Cutts, which addresses a question about the hardware/server-side software that powers a typical Googlebot server. “So one of the secrets of Google is that rather than employing these mainframe machines, this heavy iron, big iron kind of stuff, if you were to go into a Google data center and look at an example rack, it would look a lot like a PC,” says Cutts. “So there’s commodity PC parts. It’s the sort of thing where you’d recognize a lot of the stuff from having opened up your own computer,and what’s interesting is rather than have like special Googlebot web crawling servers, we tend to say, OK, build a whole bunch of different servers that can be used interchangeably for things like Googlebot, or web serving, or indexing. And then we have this fleet, this armada of machines, and you can deploy it on different types of tasks and different types of processing.” “So hardware wise, they’re not exactly the same, but they look a lot like regular commodity PCs,” he adds. “And there’s no difference between Googlebot servers versus regular servers at Google. You might have differences in RAM or hard disk, but in general, it’s the same sorts of stuff.” On the software side, Google of course builds everything itself, as to not have to rely on third-parties. Cutts says there’s a running joke at Google along the lines of “we don’t just build the cars oursevles, and we don’t just build the tires ourselves. We actually vulcanize the rubber on the tires ourselves.” “We tend to look at everything all the way down to the metal,” Cutts explains. “I mean, if you think about it, there’s data center efficiency. There’s power efficiency on the motherboards. And so if you can sort of keep an eye on everything all the way down, you can make your stuff a lot more efficient, a lot more powerful. You’re not wasting things because you use some outside vendor and it’s black box.” A couple months ago, Google put out a blog post discussing its data center efficiency, indicating that they are getting even more efficient. “In the same way that you might examine your electricity bill and then tweak the thermostat, we constantly track our energy consumption and use that data to make improvements to our infrastructure. As a result, our data centers use 50 percent less energy than the typical data center,” wrote Joe Kava, Senior Director, data center construction and operations at Google. Cutts says Google uses a lot of Linux-based machines and Linux-based servers. “We’ve got a lot of Linux kernel hackers,” he says. “And we tend to have software that we’ve built pretty much from the ground up to do all the different specialized tasks. So even to the point of our web servers. We don’t use Apache. We don’t use IIS. We use something called GWS, which stands for the Google Web Server.” “So by having our own binaries that we’ve built from our own stuff and building that stack all the way up, it really unlocks a lot of efficiency,” he adds. “It makes sure that there’s nothing that you can’t go in and tweak to get performance gains or to fix if you find bugs.” If you’re interested in how Google really works, you should watch this video too: Google says the average search query travels as much as 1,500 miles.

We recently told you about WPMU.org apparently getting hit by Google’s Penguin update. The site went from 8,580 visits (pretty standard for the site, having looked through the Analytics myself) to 1,527 a week later. It’s been hovering around similar numbers ever since, with a pretty clear dip right around Penguin time. Do you think this site deserved to get hit by Penguin? Let us know in the comments. We spoke with James Farmer, Founder and CEO of Incsub, which runs the site. Farmer maintains that WPMU.org engages in no keyword stuffing, link schemes, and has no quality issues. In fact, the site has actually done well throughout Google’s series of Panda updates. Farmer tells WebProNews, “We did great after Panda, it was like that update recognized we were decent folk… you can’t win them all huh?” “Apart from not being able to guess what Google was going to do in April, 3 years ago, we haven’t done anything wrong,” he says. Last week, Farmer received some second-hand info from Google’s Matt Cutts, who reportedly spoke with the Sydney Morning Herald about WPMU.org. According to Farmer, Cutts provided three problem links pointing to the site. These included a site pirating their software and two links from one spam blog using an old version of one of their WordPress themes with a link in the footer. Farmer reported that Cutts “said that we should consider the fact that we were possibly damaged by the removal of credit from links such as these.” It’s pretty interesting that if such links were the problem that it could have such a tremendous impact. It’s no wonder there have been so many discussions about negative SEO (competitors attacking each other with these kinds of tactics) since Penguin launched. The site has over 10,400+ Facebook likes, 15,600+ Twitter followers, 2,537 +1s and 4,276 FeedBurner subscribers, according to Farmer. Apparently not enough to outweigh some questionable links from third parties. “How could a bunch of incredibly low quality, spammy, rubbish (I mean a .info site… please!) footer links have made that much of a difference to a site of our size, content and reputation, unless Google has been absolutely, utterly inept for the last 4 years (and I doubt that that’s the case),” Farmer wrote in his article on the matter. When asked how many links he has out there just from footers for WordPress themes, he tells WebProNews, “Given that we stopped adding links years ago, actually not that many at all.” “However, the challenge is that given that we provided themes to a lot of multisite installs, which have since become overrun with splogs, there’s an enormous amount of links from not that many actual root domains,” he adds. “I’d guesstimate 1-2K, 99% of clearly low quality sites.” We asked if he’s heard from other WordPress theme creators, having similar issues. “Actually no, although that doesn’t surprise me that much,” he says. “Not many folk are as open as us, and in this field they probably have good reason to be. WordPress terms are very, very competitive so I wouldn’t be surprised if 9/10 competitors had something to hide!” Like many webmasters, Farmer just doesn’t know what to expect from Google, in terms of whether or not Google will consider the site to be one of the innocent casualties of Penguin. “I have no idea, I would love it if they did. I guess the thing I’m begging for is some sort of qualitative mechanism (NOT the manual webspam web, faster approach) that allows quality operators, like us, to survive and carry on providing Google users exactly the kind of helpful content they need!” Google does have a form users can submit to, if they think they’ve been wrongfully hit by the Penguin update. Google’s Matt Cutts recently told Danny Sullivan that Google considers the Penguin update a success, despite the large number of complaints from those commenting on blogs and in forums. Of course, the Penguin update, much like the Panda update, should be periodically coming back around, giving sites a chance to make fixes and recover. That also means however, sites will also have more chances to get hit. We asked Farmer if he thinks Penguin has helped or hurt search results in general, outside of his site’s issues. “Especially in the WP field they have gone wild,” he emphasizes. “For example our flagship site WPMU DEV – if you go to search for that now a competitor writing something ridiculous about us and copyright appears above our massively popular Facebook page. It even looks like our YouTube channel has been demoted. Crazy stuff.” We’ve certainly seen some other questionable search results following the update, and others have complained aplenty. Do you think the search results have improved since Penguin? Should WPMU have been hit by Penguin? Share your thoughts.

Google’s Matt Cutts has put out hundreds of videos as part of his webmaster help series. I’ll assure you that nothing like what you’re about to hear has ever appeared in any of them. Call it the anti-SEO help video of the decade, and if you’re a webmaster you can call it site suicide. You can laugh at this Matts Cutts parody video all you want, just don’t take any of its advice seriously. “In addition to keyword stuffing, we look at links to porn sites. Not that many people tend to link that much to sites within the porn industry. That’s the sort of thing that’s going to be really rewarding for users, so link to porn sites. Could it be annoying? Yes, it could be annoying, but that’s perfectly fine.” That’s one of the gems from this clever mashup from SEO guy Sam Applegate. He took (probably way to much) time to organize and analyze Cutt’s many videos and came up with this video on how to rank #1 in Google search. Except, as you may have derived from the last quote, this guide won’t have you ranking anywhere near #1. “I do think that Bing or Blekko or Duck Duck Go are potentially doing illegal things like hacking sites,” says Cutts in fragments. Check it out below: For his part, Cutts is aware of the video and his concern was with how much time it had to have taken its creator: .ditto201442259462402048{background: #000000 url(http://a0.twimg.com/images/themes/theme10/bg.gif) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto201442259462402048 a { color: #383838;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @mattcuttsMatt Cutts@seosammo wow, how much time did that take? 2 days ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto [h/t Search Engine Roundtable]

The saga of Iran’s affront on an open internet acquired another chapter today as the government’s telecommunications ministry has prohibited telephone operators, insurance firms, and local banks from using foreign-hosted email services to communicate with clients. In effect, this bans email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail – basically any email account with a domain that doesn’t end in .ir. One Google luminary expressed his disappointment in the Iranian government: Google webspam master Matt Cutts. .ditto201889143268188160{background: #000000 url(http://a0.twimg.com/images/themes/theme10/bg.gif) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto201889143268188160 a { color: #383838;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @mattcuttsMatt CuttsSaddened to see Iran regulating what email addresses people can use: http://t.co/27pZEwsG 11 hours ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto For Iran’s government, slapping these kinds of muzzles on the beak of the internet is just business as usual. This year alone, authorities have blocked websites (including Gmail and YouTube), the internet, and, in a small act of comedic justice, even its own supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Still, that’s not to say that it’s an event unworthy of disapproval. According to AFP, entities involved with the Iranian government are required to use email addresses ending with gov.ir to conduct business while universities need to use emails with the domain ac.ir. To be fair, though, this is far from being the worst example of Iran’s communication restrictions with the internet. More, isn’t it fairly common for businesses or universities to restrict what email clients an employee can use in order to conduct business correspondence? Regardless of who you are or where you are, you probably shouldn’t be using your personal Gmail or Yahoo email account to relate state secrets or even state not-so-secrets. This restriction of foreign-based email providers for certain businesses and governments only looks bad in the context of Iran’s history of censorship and throttling of communication mediums but it’s hardly an egregious decision. Were this, say, Sweden who mandated that some businesses and governments needed to use state-sponsored emails in order to interact with clients, it would hardly be news-worthy.

As expected, Google has finally released its big list of algorithm changes for the month of April. It’s been an interesting month, to say the least, with not only the Penguin update, but a couple of Panda updates sprinkled in. There’s not a whole lot about either of those on this list, however, which is really a testament to just how many things Google is always doing to change its algorithm – signals (some of them, at least) which could help or hurt you in other ways besides the hugely publicized updates. We’ll certainly be digging a bit more into some of these in forthcoming articles. At a quick glance, I noticed a few more freshness-related tweaks. Google has also expanded its index base by 15%, which is interesting. As far as Penguin goes, Google does mention: “Keyword stuffing classifier improvement. [project codename "Spam"] We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword stuffing. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better.” Keyword stuffing is against Google’s quality guidelines, and was one of the specific things Matt Cutts mentioned in his announcement of the update. Interestingly, unlike previous lists, there is no mention of Panda whatsoever on this list, though there were 2 known Panda data refreshes during April. Here’s the list in its entirety: Categorize paginated documents. [launch codename "Xirtam3", project codename "CategorizePaginatedDocuments"] Sometimes, search results can be dominated by documents from a paginated series. This change helps surface more diverse results in such cases. More language-relevant navigational results. [launch codename "Raquel"] For navigational searches when the user types in a web address, such as [bol.com], we generally try to rank that web address at the top. However, this isn’t always the best answer. For example, bol.com is a Dutch page, but many users are actually searching in Portuguese and are looking for the Brazilian email service, http://www.bol.uol.com.br/. This change takes into account language to help return the most relevant navigational results. Country identification for webpages. [launch codename "sudoku"] Location is an important signal we use to surface content more relevant to a particular country. For a while we’ve had systems designed to detect when a website, subdomain, or directory is relevant to a set of countries. This change extends the granularity of those systems to the page level for sites that host user generated content, meaning that some pages on a particular site can be considered relevant to France, while others might be considered relevant to Spain. Anchors bug fix. [launch codename "Organochloride", project codename "Anchors"] This change fixed a bug related to our handling of anchors. More domain diversity. [launch codename "Horde", project codename "Domain Crowding"] Sometimes search returns too many results from the same domain. This change helps surface content from a more diverse set of domains. More local sites from organizations. [project codename "ImpOrgMap2"] This change makes it more likely you’ll find an organization website from your country (e.g. mexico.cnn.com for Mexico rather than cnn.com). Improvements to local navigational searches. [launch codename "onebar-l"] For searches that include location terms, e.g. [dunston mint seattle] or [Vaso Azzurro Restaurant 94043], we are more likely to rank the local navigational homepages in the top position, even in cases where the navigational page does not mention the location. Improvements to how search terms are scored in ranking. [launch codename "Bi02sw41"] One of the most fundamental signals used in search is whether and how your search terms appear on the pages you’re searching. This change improves the way those terms are scored. Disable salience in snippets. [launch codename "DSS", project codename "Snippets"] This change updates our system for generating snippets to keep it consistent with other infrastructure improvements. It also simplifies and increases consistency in the snippet generation process. More text from the beginning of the page in snippets. [launch codename "solar", project codename "Snippets"] This change makes it more likely we’ll show text from the beginning of a page in snippets when that text is particularly relevant. Smoother ranking changes for fresh results. [launch codename "sep", project codename "Freshness"] We want to help you find the freshest results, particularly for searches with important new web content, such as breaking news topics. We try to promote content that appears to be fresh. This change applies a more granular classifier, leading to more nuanced changes in ranking based on freshness. Improvement in a freshness signal. [launch codename "citron", project codename "Freshness"] This change is a minor improvement to one of the freshness signals which helps to better identify fresh documents. No freshness boost for low-quality content. [launch codename “NoRot”, project codename “Freshness”] We have modified a classifier we use to promote fresh content to exclude fresh content identified as particularly low-quality. Tweak to trigger behavior for Instant Previews. This change narrows the trigger area for Instant Previews so that you won’t see a preview until you hover and pause over the icon to the right of each search result. In the past the feature would trigger if you moused into a larger button area. Sunrise and sunset search feature internationalization. [project codename "sunrise-i18n"] We’ve internationalized the sunrise and sunset search feature to 33 new languages, so now you can more easily plan an evening jog before dusk or set your alarm clock to watch the sunrise with a friend. Improvements to currency conversion search feature in Turkish. [launch codename "kur", project codename "kur"] We launched improvements to the currency conversion search feature in Turkish. Try searching for [dolar kuru], [euro ne kadar], or [avro kaç para]. Improvements to news clustering for Serbian. [launch codename "serbian-5"] For news results, we generally try to cluster articles about the same story into groups. This change improves clustering in Serbian by better grouping articles written in Cyrillic and Latin. We also improved our use of “stemming” — a technique that relies on the “stem” or root of a word. Better query interpretation. This launch helps us better interpret the likely intention of your search query as suggested by your last few searches. News universal results serving improvements. [launch codename "inhale"] This change streamlines the serving of news results on Google by shifting to a more unified system architecture. UI improvements for breaking news topics. [launch codename "Smoothie", project codename "Smoothie"] We’ve improved the user interface for news results when you’re searching for a breaking news topic. You’ll often see a large image thumbnail alongside two fresh news results. More comprehensive predictions for local queries. [project codename "Autocomplete"] This change improves the comprehensiveness of autocomplete predictions by expanding coverage for long-tail U.S. local search queries such as addresses or small businesses. Improvements to triggering of public data search feature. [launch codename "Plunge_Local", project codename "DIVE"] This launch improves triggering for the public data search feature, broadening the range of queries that will return helpful population and unemployment data. Adding Japanese and Korean to error page classifier. [launch codename "maniac4jars", project codename "Soft404"] We have signals designed to detect crypto 404 pages (also known as “soft 404s”), pages that return valid text to a browser, but the text only contains error messages, such as “Page not found.” It’s rare that a user will be looking for such a page, so it’s important we be able to detect them. This change extends a particular classifier to Japanese and Korean. More efficient generation of alternative titles. [launch codename "HalfMarathon"] We use a variety of signals to generate titles in search results. This change makes the process more efficient, saving tremendous CPU resources without degrading quality. More concise and/or informative titles. [launch codename "kebmo"] We look at a number of factors when deciding what to show for the title of a search result. This change means you’ll find more informative titles and/or more concise titles with the same information. Fewer bad spell corrections internationally. [launch codename "Potage", project codename "Spelling"] When you search for [mango tea], we don’t want to show spelling predictions like “Did you mean ‘mint tea’?” We have algorithms designed to prevent these “bad spell corrections” and this change internationalizes one of those algorithms. More spelling corrections globally and in more languages. [launch codename "pita", project codename "Autocomplete"] Sometimes autocomplete will correct your spelling before you’ve finished typing. We’ve been offering advanced spelling corrections in English, and recently we extended the comprehensiveness of this feature to cover more than 60 languages. More spell corrections for long queries. [launch codename "caterpillar_new", project codename "Spelling"] We rolled out a change making it more likely that your query will get a spell correction even if it’s longer than ten terms. You can watch uncut footage of when we decided to launch this from our past blog post. More comprehensive triggering of “showing results for” goes international. [launch codename "ifprdym", project codename "Spelling"] In some cases when you’ve misspelled a search, say [pnumatic], the results you find will actually be results for the corrected query, “pneumatic.” In the past, we haven’t always provided the explicit user interface to say, “Showing results for pneumatic” and the option to “Search instead for pnumatic.” We recently started showing the explicit “Showing results for” interface more often in these cases in English, and now we’re expanding that to new languages. “Did you mean” suppression goes international. [launch codename "idymsup", project codename "Spelling"] Sometimes the “Did you mean?” spelling feature predicts spelling corrections that are accurate, but wouldn’t actually be helpful if clicked. For example, the results for the predicted correction of your search may be nearly identical to the results for your original search. In these cases, inviting you to refine your search isn’t helpful. This change first checks a spell prediction to see if it’s useful before presenting it to the user. This algorithm was already rolled out in English, but now we’ve expanded to new languages. Spelling model refresh and quality improvements. We’ve refreshed spelling models and launched quality improvements in 27 languages. Fewer autocomplete predictions leading to low-quality results. [launch codename "Queens5", project codename "Autocomplete"] We’ve rolled out a change designed to show fewer autocomplete predictions leading to low-quality results. Improvements to SafeSearch for videos and images. [project codename "SafeSearch"] We’ve made improvements to our SafeSearch signals in videos and images mode, making it less likely you’ll see adult content when you aren’t looking for it. Improved SafeSearch models. [launch codename "Squeezie", project codename "SafeSearch"] This change improves our classifier used to categorize pages for SafeSearch in 40+ languages. Improvements to SafeSearch signals in Russian. [project codename "SafeSearch"] This change makes it less likely that you’ll see adult content in Russian when you aren’t looking for it. Increase base index size by 15%. [project codename "Indexing"] The base search index is our main index for serving search results and every query that comes into Google is matched against this index. This change increases the number of documents served by that index by 15%. *Note: We’re constantly tuning the size of our different indexes and changes may not always appear in these blog posts. New index tier. [launch codename "cantina", project codename "Indexing"] We keep our index in “tiers” where different documents are indexed at different rates depending on how relevant they are likely to be to users. This month we introduced an additional indexing tier to support continued comprehensiveness in search results. Backend improvements in serving. [launch codename "Hedges", project codename "Benson"] We’ve rolled out some improvements to our serving systems making them less computationally expensive and massively simplifying code. “Sub-sitelinks” in expanded sitelinks. [launch codename "thanksgiving"] This improvement digs deeper into megasitelinks by showing sub-sitelinks instead of the normal snippet. Better ranking of expanded sitelinks. [project codename "Megasitelinks"] This change improves the ranking of megasitelinks by providing a minimum score for the sitelink based on a score for the same URL used in general ranking. Sitelinks data refresh. [launch codename "Saralee-76"] Sitelinks (the links that appear beneath some search results and link deeper into the site) are generated in part by an offline process that analyzes site structure and other data to determine the most relevant links to show users. We’ve recently updated the data through our offline process. These updates happen frequently (on the order of weeks). Less snippet duplication in expanded sitelinks. [project codename "Megasitelinks"] We’ve adopted a new technique to reduce duplication in the snippets of expanded sitelinks. Movie showtimes search feature for mobile in China, Korea and Japan. We’ve expanded our movie showtimes feature for mobile to China, Korea and Japan. No freshness boost for low quality sites. [launch codename “NoRot”, project codename “Freshness”] We’ve modified a classifier we use to promote fresh content to exclude sites identified as particularly low-quality. MLB search feature. [launch codename "BallFour", project codename "Live Results"] As the MLB season began, we rolled out a new MLB search feature. Try searching for [sf giants score] or [mlb scores]. Spanish football (La Liga) search feature. This feature provides scores and information about teams playing in La Liga. Try searching for [barcelona fc] or [la liga]. Formula 1 racing search feature. [launch codename "CheckeredFlag"] This month we introduced a new search feature to help you find Formula 1 leaderboards and results. Try searching [formula 1] or [mark webber]. Tweaks to NHL search feature. We’ve improved the NHL search feature so it’s more likely to appear when relevant. Try searching for [nhl scores] or [capitals score]. Keyword stuffing classifier improvement. [project codename "Spam"] We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword stuffing. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better. More authoritative results. We’ve tweaked a signal we use to surface more authoritative content. Better HTML5 resource caching for mobile. We’ve improved caching of different components of the search results page, dramatically reducing latency in a number of cases. More to come…

Danny Sullivan put out a new article with some fresh quotes from Matt Cutts. From this, we know that he has deemed the Penguin update a success. In terms of false positives, he says it hasn’t had the same impact as the Panda or Florida updates, though Google has seen “a few cases where we might want to investigate more.” Sullivan confirmed what many of us had assumed was the case: Penguin will continue into the future, much like the Panda update. Cutts is even quoted in the article: “It is possible to clean things up…the bottom line is, try to resolve what you can.” The Good News Depending on your outlook, this could either be taken as good or bad news. On the good side of things, it means you can come back. Just because your site was destroyed by Penguin, you still have a shot to get back in Google’s good graces – even without having to submit a reconsideration request. Google’s algorithmically, assuming that it does what it is supposed to, will detect that you are no longer in violation of Google’s guidelines, and treat your site accordingly. The Bad News The bad news is that there is always the chance it won’t work like it’s supposed to. As I’m sure you’re aware, there are many, many complaints about the Penguin update already. Here’s an interesting one. Many feel like it’s not exactly done what it is supposed to. Another perhaps not so positive element of the news is that sites will have to remain on their toes, wondering if something they’ve done will trigger future iterations of the Penguin update. Remember when Demand Media’s eHow as not hit by the Panda update when it first launched, but was then later hit by another iteration of it, and had to delete hundreds of thousands of articles, and undergo a huge change in design, and to some extent, business model? But on the other hand, eHow content is the better for it, despite a plethora of angry writers who no longer get to contribute content. There’s always the chance that some sites have managed to escape Penguin so far, but just haven’t been hit yet. Of course, Danny makes a great point in that “for any site that ‘lost’ in the rankings, someone gained.” It will be interesting to see how often the Penguin update gets a refresh. There were two Panda refreshes in April alone (bookending the Penguin update). It might be even more interesting to see how many complaints there are when the refreshes come back, and how often they’re noticed. Even the last Panda update went unconfirmed for about a week. Either way, be prepared for Penguin news to come peppered throughout the years to come. Just like Panda. We’ll certainly continue to cover both.

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land put up a great Penguin article with some new quotes from Matt Cutts. We’ve referenced some of the points made in other articles, but one important thing to note from the whole thing is that Cutts pointed to two very specific videos that people should watch if they want to clean up their sites and recover from the Penguin update. We often share Google’s Webmaster Help videos, which feature Cutts giving advice based on user-submitted questions (or sometimes his own questions). I’m sure we’ve run these in the past, but according to Sullivan, Cutts pointed to these: Guess what: in both videos, he talks about Google’s quality guidelines. That is your recovery manual, as far as Google is concerned. Here are some articles we’ve posted recently specifically on different aspects of the guidelines: Google Penguin Update: Don’t Forget About Duplicate Content Google Penguin Update: A Lesson In Cloaking Google Penguin Update Recovery: Hidden Text And Links Recover From Google Penguin Update: Get Better At Links Google Penguin Update: 12 Tips Directly From Google Google Penguin Update Recovery: Getting Better At Keywords Google Penguin Update: Seriously, Avoid Doorway Pages Google Penguin Update And Affiliate Programs So, in your recovery plan, take all of this into account, and these tips that Cutts lent his seal of approval to. And when all else fails, according to Cutts, you might want to just start over with a new site.

Marc Ensign published a good blog post about staying on good terms with Google, in the post-Penguin world. There are plenty of posts out there on this topic. I’ve seen a fair amount of pretty good ones, but this one might be worth paying particular attention to. The post, titled “Google Shakeup: Coming To A Website Near You” has a bullet list for steps to a sound content strategy. There are certainly plenty of good posts on this subject out there too, but Google’s head of webspam Matt Cutts gave something of an endorsement to this list on Twitter in a conversation with Ensign. .ditto198064019976880128{background: #1A1B1F url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/540158963/marcensign-twitterback.jpg) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto198064019976880128 a { color: #2FC2EF;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @MarcEnsignMarc Ensign@mattcutts You have a sense of humor, right? Picturing you with black hair and a nose ring seemed like a good idea http://t.co/yBlnCdFQ 23 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto .ditto198148244688207872{background: #000000 url(http://a0.twimg.com/images/themes/theme10/bg.gif) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto198148244688207872 a { color: #383838;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @mattcuttsMatt Cutts@MarcEnsign over the years I’ve grown a pretty thick skin. 17 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto .ditto198149388349083648{background: #1A1B1F url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/540158963/marcensign-twitterback.jpg) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto198149388349083648 a { color: #2FC2EF;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @MarcEnsignMarc Ensign@mattcutts C’mon, you know we all love you! We really don’t have a choice! Would love to hear your thoughts on my post if you have time. 17 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto .ditto198151880860385281{background: #000000 url(http://a0.twimg.com/images/themes/theme10/bg.gif) no-repeat;padding: 20px;} .ditto198151880860385281 a { color: #383838;} p.dittoTweet{background: #fff;padding: 10px 12px 10px 50px;margin: 0;min-height: 48px;color: #000;font-size: 18px !important;line-height: 22px;-moz-border-radius: 5px;-webkit-border-radius: 5px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata {display: block;width: 100%;clear: both;margin-top: 8px;padding-top: 12px;height: 65px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author {line-height: 22px;color: #666;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} .mainlink {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 26px;color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: none;} .mainlink: hover {color: #1F98C7;text-decoration: underline;} .tweet {font-size: 24px;} p.dittoTweet span.metadata span.author img {float: left; margin: 0px 7px 0px 0px;} p.dittoTweet a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp {font-size: 12px;display: block;color: #999;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a {color: #999;text-decoration: none;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a > span {display: inline-block;width: 16px;background-image:url(http://images.ientrymail.com/socialditto/everything-spritev2.png);background-repeat: no-repeat;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply > span {background-position: 0px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.reply:hover > span {background-position: -16px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet > span {background-position: -80px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.retweet:hover > span {background-position: -96px 3px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite > span {background-position: -32px 2px;} p.dittoTweet span.timestamp a.favorite:hover > span {background-position: -48px 2px;} @mattcuttsMatt Cutts@MarcEnsign the bullet points looked solid. I haven’t seen Happy Feet 2, so I can’t vouch for that part. 17 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto So the bullet points from Ensign’s post, Cutts says, “looked solid” include: Create a blog and consistently build up your site into a wealth of valuable content. Work with a PR firm or read a book and start writing legitimate press releases on a regular basis and post them on your site. Visit blogs within your industry and leave valuable feedback in their comments section. Link out to other valuable resources within your industry that would benefit your visitors. Share everything you are creating on 2 or 3 of your favorite social media sites of choice. Position yourself as an expert. I should make a point about that second-to-last one. Sharing EVERYTHING you are creating on 2 or 3 social networks. In another article, we looked at a Webmaster Help video Cutts posted in response to a user submitted question about using your Twitter account like an RSS service for every article you post. While Cutts indicated that doing that isn’t going to be a problem as far as Google’s quality guidelines, he said it can be annoying if you do it with every post, and you post a whole lot of content. I made the case for why it depends on how the user is using Twitter. Just seemed worth pointing out. Note:I know I’ve written a whole lot about Matt Cutts lately. I’m not stalking him. I promise. It’s just that webmasters want to rank in Google, and he’s obviously the go-to guy for advice, so it seems appropriate that people know about what he’s saying on these topics. Hence, our extensive Matt Cutts coverage. By the way, perusing that coverage is advised. On our Matt Cutts page, you’ll find a plethora of great advice right from Cutts.