Posts by Kristi Hagen

Google has been releasing video tutorials less than 3min long, on some of the most basic of questions related to search and your Web site. We have decided to feature these quick questions and answers to be sure that ALL of your questions are answered!

In today's question, Matt Cutts (head of Google's Webspam team) gives his advice on rolling out large quantities of new content. The question asks,

"A newspaper company wants to add an archive with 200k pages. Should they add it all at once or in steps?" - John, Zurich

Cutts says either way is acceptable. But if this were for his site, he would roll out the archive in large blocks rather than all at once. Releasing huge blocks of...

Netflix, Hulu and Amazon has proven without a doubt that people want to view their TV programs streaming online with a low monthly fee and NO contract to tie them in. This has put the cable companies up in arms and scrambling to shift programming to online platforms as they continue to lose viewers. Well, watch out cable because here comes trouble...

Rumor has it that YouTube is planning to roll out a paid membership system that will control the access of up to 50 YouTube channels. Memberships are said to start at $1.99/mo. and will include a commercial free option. This is all set to go live as soon a...

Google has been releasing video tutorials less than 3min long, on some of the most basic of questions related to search and your Web site. We have decided to feature these quick questions and answers to be sure that ALL of your questions are answered!

In today's question, Matt Cutts (head of Google's Webspam team) addresses the site linking in relation to Google's quality guidelines. The question asks,
"Suppose I have a site that covers fishing overall (A) & I make another fishing site that solely focuses on lure fishing (B). Does linking to A from B violate guidelines? I'll make sure both have high quality content & I disclose that they're both owned by me." -- Kenichi, Tokyo

Cutts explains linking t...

At the Design Day conference in Norway, Microsoft's General Manager of Windows Phone Design, Albert Shum, and Wolff Olin's Executive Creative Director, Todd Simmons presented the process and story behind Microsoft's upcoming rebranding. It is a huge undertaking for a multi-faceted corporation with a billion-plus users to change their look and design. This is the type of move that can make or break a company.

Take a look at the old versus the new:

In Shum and Simmons' presentation, they showed this Bing logo ...

Google has been releasing short 2-3min video tutorials on some of the most basic of questions related to search and your Web site. We have decided to feature these quick questions and answers to be sure that ALL of your questions are answered!

In today's question, Matt Cutts (head of Google's Webspam team) addresses the reasons why a new website may initially have high page rank, and why said page rank might drop over time.

The question asks:

"When we create a new landing page with quality content, Google ranks that page on the top 30-50 for targeted keywords. Then why does the rank get decreased for the next 2 to 3 weeks? If pages didn't have required quality, then why did it get ranked in the firs...

Google's site, How Search Works, features a prominent Fighting Spam section which features live spam takedowns and some other interesting details. For example, here is some gambling spam that Google has removed from their search results.

Within the Fighting Spam portion of Google's latest resource are statistics showing:

• Manual takedowns
• Type of spam taken ...

Face it - Search engine algorithms are logical. The people in charge of the changes to the formula have goals and they adjust the algorithm to help accomplish those goals. That makes predicting the changes to the formula ALL about trying to figure out the goals of the search engines and how they apply to rankings.

Sounds simple enough, but then why isn't it? In my 11 years of experience I've learned that it's complicated because people make it that way. For example, when a trusted authority on search figures out a new change and explains it to their readers, like all scientists, they tag the new concept with a na...