Monday, November 26, 2007 at 10:14 AM
When Matt Cutts, who heads up Google's webspam team, dropped by our Kirkland offices a little while ago we found ourselves with a video camera and an hour to spare. The result? We quickly put together a few videos we hope you'll find useful.
In our first video, Matt talks about the anatomy of a search result, and gives some useful tips on how you can help improve how your site appears in our results pages. This talk covers everything you'll see in a search result, including page title, page description, and sitelinks, and explains those other elements that can appear, such as stock quotes, cached pages links, and more.
If you like the video format (and even if you don't), or have ideas for subjects you'd like covered in the future, let us know what you think in our Webmaster Help Group. And rest assured, we'll be working to improve the sound quality for our next batch of vids.
70 comments:
Matt was in Kirkland and I missed it?
Hope you enjoyed our cold rainy weather Matt - Welcome to Seattle :o)
The YouTube player in its embedded version contains some bug which sometimes makes it stop when you reposition the time indicator, even when the video fully buffered. But hey, I guess it's company politics to choose an inferior player than Google Video for these kind of videos ;)
Also, the microphone is a little noisy.
Other than that, interesting, let's have more of these!
Interesting video, thank you guys. For the next videos to come it would be perfect if you could fix the sound problem. At some point it doesn't lets you hear well what Matt's saying.
Really good idea to post videos, a very pleasent way to learn and a interactive way for webmasters to increase their knowleadge in this issue.
The video doesn't seem to be loading now. Problem with it?
put a transcript with each visitor or a seperate MP3 files.
It is not convenient for people to watch videos during the business hours in some office environments.
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also consider putting SYNOMYNS as video snippets, when there are synonyms on the specific page or in the backlinks anchor text.
Of course this requires advanced algos - but it is important
good video, horrible audio.. ugh!
Matt, in the future, do a SOUND CHECK, please!
So long and thanks for all the fish.
I think Starbucks was a soft choice of topic for Matt to dissect for his snippet examination. This is because their page is mostly flash and contains zero paragraphs of text. Because of that it was a 99% certainty that Google would take the meta description rather than use on page text. I would prefer to see how Google displays the description of a page when that page is very text heavy.
please i know my question is off-topic but I need absolutely
an answer:I have a blogspot domain name monetizingblogs.blogspot.com and
because I am really needing some money so I am thinking to sell it
but I hear that LEGALY I can't and it's not allowed..so please clarify
this point for me or give the email
of the responsible service...
THANK YOU
I'd much prefer a text-based reference on this.
"I think Starbucks was a soft choice of topic for Matt to dissect for his snippet examination. This is because their page is mostly flash and contains zero paragraphs of text. Because of that it was a 99% certainty that Google would take the meta description rather than use on page text. I would prefer to see how Google displays the description of a page when that page is very text heavy."
Depending, of course, on search query, most of the time they present my well written meta description in the search results
Monfis says:
"Depending, of course, on search query, most of the time they present my well written meta description in the search results"
If the meta description is there, and the term(s) searched are within the description, then the meta description will appear in the snippet.
If there are no meta tags, then the text around the term within the body of the content will be displayed in the snippet.
If there are meta tags (including the description) and the key term is not in the description, the text around the key term within the contant pf the page will be displayed in teh snippet.
Do remember that if the key term isn't within the content, just having it in the meta tag won't cause rankings. You have to have it in your meta tag, and within the content of the site in order to show up in the SERP.
Of course linking, site architecture, keyword densities, etc all play a factor in rankings as well :o)
Indeed, adding some subtitles would be the best improvement for the next video.
Videos like that are awesome, because we need to understand how Google sees our web site to increase the visbility
Thanks, thats a good tips from matt's. but why starbuck.
It will also be a good idea to make this videos free for download and with subtitles as this is very important stuff for us to see how Google sees our web sites.
Thank you guys for this kind of stuff in the web!
As a non-professional webmaster (I'm actually a surgeon) I enjoy learning through videos even as casually created as this one. It also serves to associate a living human being with a huge company.
Thanks and keep them coming.
Jon Perlman, MD
Very useful and informative video. Actually, I like that the format was a video. I don't work for a draconian company and find this the best way to consume information.
I realise this isn't the place to ask it but I'll be damned if I can find a way to contact someone from the team within Webmaster Central itself.
I am unable to verify my site within Webmaster Central by either the tag or file method even though I've done both and they are definitely there. It keeps giving a server timeout however the site is fine.
Can anyone offer any further advice?
Matt says that the snippets are totally automated. But a lot of sites have a "About Us" page and they do not show up for a lot of site's snippets. So it would be nice to know what criteria a site must have to display snippets.
The video is fine, the microphone was a little noisy at times.
On another note, it would also be nice to know when a webmaster needs to submit a reconsideration request. Should it be when the site is deindexed, or for any violation of the webmasters guidelines.
Admin, you can post this type of question in our Webmaster Help Group. Please be sure to post your URL so that someone can help you figure out what's going on.
Great video! It validates my gut feeling about the value of informal videos for trasnmitting information, knowledge, news.
Matt,
What criteria does Google use in choosing to display the additional links beneath the main snippet. Is this based on traffic or popularity?
Also - I would love to see an info video about the 'Google Maps' thumbnail snippet!
i hear this blog new bu it will help me thanks..
Rick Vidallon -
You must be dreaming if you think Google would reveal anything relative to their algorithm. Though as a wild guess, I think you need a significant amount of inbound links, content and popularity before Google decides your site is relevant and important enough to their users for sitelinks.
The YouTube video isn't clear,other than that is seems great!
Interesting video.
To me, it appears that the criteria for displaying the additional links is less dependent on a smart algorithm and involves direct human editing.
In other words, I strongly believe that Google's editors manually edit content based on their own personal opinion of popularity and relevance.
A good example is clearly provided when using Google's Base API at http://code.google.com/apis/base/
By conducting a simple query test, we can clearly see Google's definition of relevance according to their API. Sample query results.
http://www.google.com/base/feeds/snippets?bq=digital+camera&max-resu lts=30
Out of 30 products, Google lists two companies. 4 products provided by bhphotovideo.com and 26 provided by eBay.
http://www.google.com/base/feeds/snippets?bq=formal+dresses&max-results =30
Out of 30 products, Google lists three companies. 1 product provided by tinytotdressshop.com, 1 product provided by dreamstime.com and 28 provided by eBay.
http://www.google.com/base/feeds/snippets?bq=pc+games&max-results=30
Out of 30 products, Google lists 30 of 30 provided by eBay with some repeated results. Is eBay the only seller of PC Games listing with Google Base? Or, are all others considered irrelevant?
The query can easily be changed to demonstrate Google's definition of relevance on any keywords by changing the parameters after "bq=".
One other note, each eBay link is actually a redirect from adfarm.mediaplex.com. Is Google collecting payment from eBay? And second why are redirects being allowed when redirects are a direct violation of Google's Base listing policies?
http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=61118&hl=en_US
"Your URLs must link directly to the webpages that contain information about your items. We do not allow links that redirect."
This a very helpful video - thank you! Makes it much easier to explain to my readers why meta descriptions are important... by letting MATT explain it FOR me!
Thanks for video. It is great more comfort to take information in this format but there some troubles with sound.
So glad to have found this post! I'll be embedding the video & linking to this article.
Matt, I know you are limited on the information you can give. Though the video was informational, it still leaves me in a total lack of knowledge here. Here are my questions:
1. Do a search for "clarks wallabees". Notice only 1 listing gets the results you described and the rest do now. So can only 1 site per search show results?
2. Many of use webmasters builds sites and have our links to our other pages like about us, services, etc and still do not receive those kinds of results either. What are we missing.
3. Since the multi tier results are not a paid portion of search results we is there not any real information on how to do this. I am sure us legit webmasters want to see results like this for our sites and others because it is a huge time saver in searching.
Hi IOT,
I assume you're talking about sitelinks (the indented links that sometimes show up below the first search result, showing more pages from that site)? If so, yes, they only appear for the first result. They're algorithmically selected and not all sites have them. Here's more information on how they're generated.
Hi Susan...
Talk about site links! Take a look at what this guy has been doing for over 3 years and no one has nailed him yet.
greerteam.com/
Look for the tiny text link at the bottom titled (site map).
awesome! quite useful.. thanks!
Thanks - this was terrific. Short, to the point - and VERY helpful!
Very nice video bro. Good job.
hi matt very nice videos thank you. im from turkey. its turkish language and subtitles lesson video required.
seo
¿porqué no se transcribe la pieza más importante de información de esta página (el vídeo) al elegir la opción de traducir?
Hi Matt,
Video is awesome but there is some problem on sound, but its really help full. thanks for giving some great info.
Nitin Singh
CEO
Web Info Softech
http://www.webinfosoftech.com
This was very helpful, thanks Matt..
ceo RateMyFresh
http://ratemyfresh.com
I really enjoyed the video, and hope you can make some more like this as i am striving to learn all i can as quickly as I can. I have been working diligently on my Virginia Beach Real Estate Website at http://vahud.com
thank you very good
Unfortunately,I can not play the video.
Thanks for a peek into the workings of Google. I came away with a few ideas for changes that will improve my listings.
Thanks so much for this video, great way to teach this topic and others!
The audio is so poor that I have to give my ears a long break. Please Official Google Webmaster Central Blog...please put something that has quality and not half a job. I understand it is a last minute thing.
Thanks
Wayne Lam
Many thanks.
Glad I saw it.
It means that even newish websites can get a good ranking without million of links!
Thank you for tip
http://www.thaicoding.net
thanks for this nice youtube video
To know the fundamentals of the search "Its a good presentation"
More detail on how to get the Sitelines would be helpful.
Nice video! Please more on this subject but without audio distortion ;) thank you.
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Free Worldwide Classified Ads with User Feedback
Really good idea to post videos.
Thank you Ríona MacNamara and Webmaster Tools team.
# konya çiçek
wow, i like it! thanks!
This is I'm looking for.
Thanks google
Thank you for sharing, google web master central
Dude!!!! Google is a multi-billion dollar company, do you think it might be a good idea to post a video with good audio? The bad audio is a major distraction to the content.
Good advice but that mic is doing my head in!
the advice was ok, I think he couldve explained it a little better for us young people, also he kept using the word "algorithmic" when referring to the sitelinks. It doesnt make sense! Algorithmic means a set of rules for solving a problem with a number of steps, he kept saying "no money involved, its completely algorithmic" as if that meant something about "being free".....
I might have overlooked it, but did u mention as to how the side links have come up? As its free and not handled by some"one", it has to depend on something that Google pushes this up!
Excellent Explanation MATT...
Guess Google's taken off the "note this" feature. I don't see any search results showing that.
Hmmm .. interesting .. Matt mentioned about sources which Google extract the snippets:
1) Open Directory Project
2) Site Content
3) Meta tags
Anyone knows if their importance are in that order?
The information in the video worked this time too. Thank you for your information.
Thanks, great video
Very Informative :) thank you for the video, this really helps...
Thanks for your video....Its really helpful
Is it fine to make title according to google algorithm? plz tell me which is suitable title? EXAMPLE are:-
1.)
back pain do's and don'ts.(because do's and don'ts comes in google algorithm)
2.)
back pain do and do not.
(because do and do not, does'nt comes in google algorithm)
Matt explained very beautiful, I think the foremost of a page for search engine optimization process is to use the page title tag "title". Thank you Matt.
i need traffic from my site more.how is this possible very easily?
Hi everyone,
Since over a year has passed since we published this post, we're closing the comments to help us focus on the work ahead. If you still have a question or comment you'd like to discuss, free to visit and/or post your topic in our Webmaster Central Help Forum.
Thanks and take care,
The Webmaster Central Team
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