SEO Tip #88: Why Does Google Give SEO Advice?

SEO Tip #88: Why Does Google Give SEO Advice?

Matt Cutts: Let me take a step back and sort of rephrase what I think Borislav is trying to ask. I think he is saying, “if everybody has really bad SEO and they can’t rank the way that they want then they have to buy ads and isn’t that a good thing for Google?” I
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SEO Tip #87: Is It Still Important to Offer A Sitemap to Users?

SEO Tip #87: Is It Still Important to Offer A Sitemap to Users?

Matt Cutts: Well that depends. Do you want good search engine rankings in Web 2.0? Because I think you do. Site maps are not just good for users. Site maps, even on the page, even HTML site maps can also be a fantastic way to distribute PageRank throughout your site. One of the best ways to
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SEO Tip #86: How Long Does It Take For Rich Snippets To Appear?

SEO Tip #86: How Long Does It Take For Rich Snippets To Appear?

Matt Cutts: That’s a good question. I didn’t know the answer so I had to ask our rich snippet team. They literally just got back to me and said not to be surprised if it takes a month or two right now. By the time you put something through the RICH Snippet testing tool, if
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SEO Tip #85: Does Google Use Data From Social Sites In Ranking?

SEO Tip #85: Does Google Use Data From Social Sites In Ranking?

Matt Cutts: Yes I can confirm it. We do use Twitter and FaceBook links in ranking as we always have in our web search rankings. But in addition we are also trying to figure out a little bit about the reputation of an author or a creator on Twitter or FaceBook. Let me give you a
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SEO Tip #84: Does Webmaster Tools Have an API?

SEO Tip #84: Does Webmaster Tools Have an API?

Matt Cutts: Good news, we’ve always had the ability to, for example with backlinks, to download things in a CSV form. In fact many different features within Google Webmaster Tools provide the ability to download things and comma separate a value, or CSV file, or various text files and things like that. However, we also have
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SEO Tip #83: Which Types of Webmasters Tools Errors Should I Report to Google?

SEO Tip #83: Which Types of Webmasters Tools Errors Should I Report to Google?

Matt Cutts: You’ve essentially asked the engineering equivalent of: did you fart? Because if you ask at Google do you monitor for errors, that’s a little bit kind of impolite. It’s almost like, well of course I monitor for errors. So just to be safe I pinged the Webmaster Tools team and I said, “Hey
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SEO Tip #82: How Can I Explain to Clients That Rankings Cannot Be Guaranteed?

SEO Tip #82: How Can I Explain to Clients That Rankings Cannot Be Guaranteed?

Matt Cutts: It’s a fair question. I think one thing you can do is send people to the page we have on Google about search engine optimizers and how to find a good search engine optimizer because I think we say directly no one can guarantee a number 1 ranking on Google. So you can
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SEO Tip #81: Why Doesn’t The Click through Data In Webmaster Tools Match What I See In Google Analytics?

SEO Tip #81: Why Doesn’t The Click through Data In Webmaster Tools Match What I See In Google Analytics?

Matt Cutts: That’s a good question. To give you a little perspective the Google Analytics team is separate from the Google Webmasters Tool team. In fact they are in different locations. They use different code basis. They’re really sort of completely different silos within Google. So it’s not as if a ton of data sharing
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SEO Tip #80: Can I Tell Google Not to Display the Date In My Site’s Snippets?

SEO Tip #80: Can I Tell Google Not to Display the Date In My Site’s Snippets?

Matt Cutts: I’ll give you the short answer, which is no, and then I’ll give you all the background behind it. So way back in the mists of time whenever dinosaurs roamed the earth, and meta descriptions were pretty much the only way that search engines had to return what was shown to search engines,
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