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Yesterday, Google's Matt Cutts and Michael Wyszomierski posted a non-SEO related video, which I had to turn to make it SEO related.
The video describes the process Matt and Michael goes through when creating these SEO videos. One topic that came up was that sometimes Matt needs to ask others for the answer because he doesn't know the answer fully.
I asked Matt on Twitter what percentage of questions does he need to go out and ask someone else about. Matt responded saying that about 10% of the questions he needs to ask others about.
Here is his tweet:
@rustybrick Maybe 10%? Oftentimes I'll spot a question a few days before taping and ping a specific team to see if they want to communicate
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) April 9, 2014He then explained a way to know which videos needed outside help:
@rustybrick anything in particular. You can also tell from the video length. 1-2 minutes tend to have immediate answers. If the video is
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) April 9, 2014@rustybrick longer, then we took some time to think about it, brainstorm the main points to get across, etc.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) April 9, 2014I did ask him how much of the algorithm is in his brain, but that question he did not respond to.
@mattcutts so what part of the algo is part of your brain? or in other words, would you say you know 40% of the algo?
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) April 9, 2014Forum discussion at Twitter.
Image credit to BigStockPhoto for Google brain
Comments:
Josh Zehtabchi
04/10/2014 01:02 pm
Odd you did not get the final response. I would imagine that's really the money question. Too bad. I wouldn't imagine Google would put all of their eggs in one basket (mind). Too damn bad you didn't get that reply. *Sigh*
Jawad Latif
04/10/2014 01:33 pm
Don't you see the plenty of replies Matt did?
Josh Zehtabchi
04/10/2014 01:34 pm
On the last question.... Regarding how much of the algo he knows... IMHO, that's the most telling question.
Jared
04/10/2014 10:58 pm
Maybe he did not answer the last Q because it is a question without an answer. I would assume that he may not even know how large the algorithm is, so for his role he would not be able to put a percentage on it. Besides, what is "the algorithm" it is likely several different ones. Also like Josh said he likely is not privy to the entire algorithm, or set of them.
Faisal Jamal
04/11/2014 04:57 am
in fact these 10% of the questions comes from genius people like "Barry Schwartz"
robert
04/11/2014 10:20 am
i think even googlers don't know how their buggy algorithms work. They just control $$$ reports and update thresholds (for anchors types, types of cms, etc) when need to increase $$$.
tomshark
04/11/2014 01:59 pm
Great stuff - makes me wonder if Matt Cutts really is normal human like the rest of us.
Stewart.T
04/11/2014 02:31 pm
I know you are being rhetorical but that is just silly to say such a thing about matt cutts. of course he isn't human.
Doc Sheldon
04/11/2014 04:10 pm
As has been said, there are many different algos in play... Matt's area is strictly spam-related, so I imagine that Barry's question excluded many of them. Still, even if Matt could provide a number, I doubt that he'd do so..
Jason Mailley
04/11/2014 04:33 pm
"Not Provided".
nikki neel
04/12/2014 06:37 am
Googles algorithm STILL does not know the difference between quality content and garbage. For all their talk the garbage w/ lots of money for page rank manipulation still wins.
nikki neel
04/12/2014 06:39 am
Im not an SEO expert but I wanted to share my experience because I noticed some very sophisticated SEO page rank manipulation schemes that Google is not addressing. In fact the cheating is getting even worse. I have noticed so many sites just started in 2014 that soar up the Google Page rank machine just by all the $ they have to pay for various schemes. http://okhereisthesituation.com/2014/04/googles-algorithm-still-sucks/
Vikram Rout
04/12/2014 07:02 am
Yes! I complete agree with you answer.
gobizen
04/13/2014 07:38 am
You are right, better I can concentrate bing, google is the big place pr manipulation
Faisal Jamal
04/13/2014 01:24 pm
The world revolves around $ so is the Google and its algorithm
Bhaskar Dihingia
04/14/2014 05:17 am
Why would he increase the "threat-levels" by answering that? :-D :-p
G
04/14/2014 07:12 am
Matt Cutts is just an actor hired by Google. He is aware of tech, but doesn't know much about SEO or spam. The idea is that he should represent the friendly version of Google's corporate empire in front of the world. He plays the average Jo who's making videos on his own with just 1 guy behind the desk, speaking with normal people, sharing his home pics on Twitter etc etc etc I know the real "Matt Cutts", which is far more boring that the one from the videos and he also doesn't wear t-shirts, but suits. There is a huge difference between the Google you know and the real Google.