Interview with Google's Matt Cutts at Pubcon

hi,

I was seeing his interview on youtube a few days ago. And Stephan Spencer, Founder and President of Netconcepts, asked him a few questions that might be of help to people here.

Stephan Spencer: what is the status on Google reading textual content within flash.swf files? Are there improvements to come?

Matt Cutts: It is a good question. I think that we do a pretty good job of reading textual content. Now, stuff within Flash is binary and you can define it in terms of characters and strokes - so you can have things that look like normal text - but that are completely weird and are not really normal text. So it can be difficult to pull the text out a Flash file. I think we do pretty well.

It used to be the case that we had our own, home-brew code to pull the text out of Flash, but I think that we have moved to the search engine SDK tool that Adobe/Macromedia offers. So, my hunch is that most of the search engines will standardize on using that search engine SDK tool to pull out the text. The easiest way to know whether you have textual content that can be read in a Flash file, is that you could always use that tool yourself and verify as well.
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Stephan Spencer: OK.
Next question: are social bookmark links given less weight than other back links - given how easy these services are to manipulate?
Matt Cutts: Typically, our policy is: a link is a link, is a link; wherever that link's worth is, that is the worth that we give it. Some people ask about links from DMOZ, links from .edu or links from .gov, and they say: "Isn't there some sort of boost? Isn't a link better if it comes from a .edu?" The short answer is: no, it is not. It is just .edu links tend to have higher PageRank, because more people link to .edu's or .gov's.
To the best of my knowledge, I do not think we have anything that says social bookmark links are given less weight. Certainly, some sites like del.icio.us and other people, may choose to put individual "nofollows" in and they may choose to take actions to try to prevent spam, but we do not typically say anything like: social bookmarking by itself - give less weight.
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Stephan Spencer: OK. So, I guess, a follow on to that would be: a .edu and .gov link, and so forth, has, typically, a more pristine link neighborhood, so it is not just about the PageRank, right? The link neighborhood comes into play.
Matt Cutts: That is a little bit of a "secret sauce" question, so I am not going to go into how much we do trust that sort of stuff.
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Stephan Spencer: Yes. Which is what I would expect that SEOs would have already realized.
Matt Cutts: Well, you would be surprised how many are like: "Oh, I have to get .edu links because they are better." You can have a useless .edu link just like you can have a great .com link.
Stephan Spencer: Yeah. And for those of you who do not believe that, just do a search for "buy viagra" and look at all the .edus that come up, or "viagra site:edu".
Matt Cutts: [laughing]
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I would appreciate your guys comment on this interview.

For more go to http://www.stephanspencer.com/search-engines/matt-cutts-interview

source: youtube and http://www.stephanspencer.com/search-engines/matt-cutts-interview

comments are welcome

cheers

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Interview with Google's Matt Cutts at Pubcon

pro.seods Peon

seeker555 Well-Known Member

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Interview with Google's Matt Cutts at Pubcon

pro.seods Peon

seeker555 Well-Known Member

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