http://searchengineland.com/matt-cutts-on-leave-195785 When the cat's gone away, the mice come out to play.
I am confuse this is good news or bad news for the guys of search engine optimization? Then who is next head of the web spam department of the Google?
it's no news. the mouth piece might be quiet but all the coding stays in place and the team of how ever many people keeps working.
This isn't that big of a deal guys... It's not like Matt Cutts is the only guy there doing things. We all need a vacation every now and then, but rest assured it isn't like things are going to stop. It's not like you can start spamming Google now and not be penalized!
In my humble opinion, its safe to say that we're not going to expect any big changes anytime soon. I used to work for a large software company (that was coincidentally directly across the street from Google's Mountain View office). When a high asset, high contributing member goes on leave, they're not likely to try to revamp all his work... especially if he's coming back. Whatever is in place right now, will likely remain in place. We just experienced a sizable algorithm change with Panda 4 and Payday Loans revamp. This big push was probably triggered by Mr. Cutts expected leave. If you have a blueprint, strategy, etc that works right now, you're in a great place with this standstill. Myself, I'll probably take more man-hour bandwidth off of testing, and put that effort into duplicating what's working.