With Google's Matt Cutts taking an extended vacation, I wanted to know, who at Google will take the blame for new algorithms being released.
Typically when big updates are announced, the webmaster/SEO community points fingers at Matt Cutts. But with him offline and not working for the next four months or so, and with the promise that algorithms will still be released during his leave, who at Google will webmasters blame?
I asked that question on Friday afternoon in a Google+ webmaster hangout when Google's Michael Wyszomierski (aka Wysz) and John Mueller in the hangout. The question starts at 53 minutes and 25 seconds in:
I have no doubt in my mind this topic came up when Matt Cutts was addressing the 'troops' about his departure. It is funny Wysz used the term "punching bag" and said they didn't say that, but I bet they did or something similar to it.
I found it interesting that John Mueller took the big hit with announcing author images being removed from the search results. It makes sense that he would be the person to take the future blame but it does look like Google is going trying to spread the blame across the whole team, when possible. I do think John's personality can handle it more than others at Google but would it be fair on John?
A WebmasterWorld thread has been discussing this for the past week or so. In fact, they ask if John Mueller will be the new head of webspam. I highly doubt that John will take on that position but I can see him taking brunt of the blame for future algorithms by him announcing it.
I guess time will tell.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Image credit to cheezburger.com
