
The Short Answers To Every Matt Cutts Video - ASquare
http://www.theshortcutts.com/
======
aresant
"Does Google use EXIF data from pictures as a ranking factor? Potentially,
yes."

This is a simple, but brilliant optimization.

With the Manufacturer & Model info from the tag you could make an educated
guess about professional vs. non-professional photography and draw conclusions
about website's intent.

With the date & time you've got relevancy of time beyond just search results.
EG if you're optimizing for freshest / relevant content a "new" article that
contains a recent picture with positive PR signals could outrank another "new"
article that is using old pictures.

With geo-data you've got an obviously powerful signal.

And on and on.

It is kind of crazy to think about the sheer # of breadcrumbs we leave online
for GOOG (and, ahem, other organizations) to learn about us with.

PS -= This is hugely useful resource, thank you for submitting!

~~~
walshemj
Most professionals will scrub the meta data from images as part of the image
optimization process - smaller images faster sites.

~~~
vdaniuk
Really? I've seen metadata scrubbed for privacy reasons, but never for size
reduction. And realistically how much is saved in proportion to the image
size?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Imgur and Craigslist specifically scrub EXIF metadata (EDIT thanks to
/u/user24) for privacy.

~~~
user24
\- for privacy

~~~
toomuchtodo
Thank you. Edit made. Need moar coffee.

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funkyy
Back in the days when I was running pretty large SEO company (at its peak it
was around 500 small businesses using us) few of guys in this field chimmed in
and got some heavy testing done. This was done around penguin or panda update
(not sure though). We have got 200 domains with no SEO done to them before,
got some Wordpress blogs and started testing trying to see how accurate Matt
Cutts suggestions were. Unfortunately results were not only mostly random, but
also pretty opposite to what we have learned from Matt. Websites that were
spammed (but in smart way) were ranking pretty good, while WH sites barely
made to top 20 for targeted keywords. You can see tons of examples like that
around the marketing forums. I am wondering if Google overgrown itself
algorithm wise and if they still know whats going on there.

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3rd3
Sorted by category:

[http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Uixgv5Hr](http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Uixgv5Hr)

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davemel37
This is a great website that should be bookmarked by everyone who cares about
search traffic.

It is curious though why this submission got up voted to the homepage and the
previous two times it was submitted that it never went anywhere...makes me
wonder if there is lots of great content that never gets up voted on HN.

Here is a submission from over a year
ago.[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5405485](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5405485)

~~~
jwegan
HN very much has a hive mind. HN used to have great articles all the time. Now
it feels like reddit. Every day tons of great articles slip into obscurity
while HN upvotes the meme of the day (Snowden, NSA, 2048, etc).

~~~
dragonwriter
Seems to me that's not evidence for or against a hive mind, its evidence that,
whether or not it has a hive mind at all, the aggregated preferences of the
current HN user base don't align as well with your preferences as those of the
user base did at one time in the past.

But having a user base whose aggregated preferences disagree with yours more
often than they used to is no more evidence of a hive mind than having what
you perceive to be "great articles all the time" is.

~~~
davemel37
There was a submission of this two months ago as well that only got two
upvotes... Do you think the community changed that much in two months?

Maybe HN should take articles that get more than one up vote but die down to
resurface in new several times to see if it slipped though the cracks or if it
really has no value to the community.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There was a submission of this two months ago as well that only got two
> upvotes... Do you think the community changed that much in two months?

There's probably pretty big effects from time of day and other things on
whether or not things get upvotes. That's not a "hive mind", that's just the
fact that upvotes come from people coming here as they feel like doing so, not
from a bunch of 24/7 staff that are paid to apply objective, consistent
criteria (which _would_ be a kind of hive mind.)

------
mbateman
> "Should I focus on clarity or jargon when writing content?"

> "Clarity, but also include jargon."

Well, that pretty much summarizes my writing strategy.

~~~
stephengillie
You should be able to express your ideas -- with jargon or nerdspeak or
technobabble -- in such a way that people can understand you even if they
don't understand those words.

~~~
gamache
Thank you for that detailed advice.

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rguldener
Site is down for me ("Oops! Google Chrome could not find
www.theshortcutts.com"), anybody else having problems? Tried my ISPs DNS as
well as the Google DNS

~~~
josefresco
It's been down for a few hours. I keep checking when I have a free minute but
doesn't seem to be coming back up.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
I think HN broke the site. You can always find the original videos at
[http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp](http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp)

Power-user tip: Google does regular live hangouts for people who have
questions about search and SEO. Here's the schedule of upcoming hangouts:
[https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/office-h...](https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/office-
hours)

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nedwin
Loving that you can filter the videos based on what colour t-shirt he's
wearing.

~~~
drb311
It's amazing how addictive a nonsensical navigation system can be.

Also: has he been working out? His chin seems to shrink a bit with every new
video.

~~~
stevejalim
Looks like he's been getting the kind of exercise I need to make time for:

[http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/a-big-challenge-
running-a-50-m...](http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/a-big-challenge-
running-a-50-mile-race/)

------
etler
The pinterest layout is only really good for pinterest (or very similar
content). This forces my eyes all over the place when I just want to read down
the list.

~~~
dredmorbius
That's also similar to the default G+ layout, which I similarly detest.

------
nkuttler
The third Q&A "How can I tell google that multiple domains are related?" \-
"Use Hreflang" doesn't make any sense. This question does not reflect the
question asked in the video, and the answer is incomplete. The question is
about translated versions of international sites, that's not simply "related".
And sitemaps work as well.

I think the site is a good idea, but if one of the first three results is
flawed I'm not too sure about the overall quality.

~~~
codemac
I mean... the videos are sortable by shirt color. I'm not sure quality is
truly the goal here.

------
gesman
After getting through the trouble of listening to so many videos - I'd suggest
to put 1-2 paragraph answer for each video instead of 1-2 words.

Lots of important details are lost together with fluff.

Although I always appreciate such work - summarizing videos via get-to-the-
point text is a great service.

PS: I'd ignore SEO videos of more than 1-2 yr old - unless tracking Matt's
t-shirt color is someone's hidden fetish...

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themonk
I was expecting one line answer to all questions: "well, it depends, but you
think about user, not Google"

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dtournemille
This site has actually been around for a while. Great Coles Notes for SEO. But
if you have the time, watch the full videos from Matt. His advice is required
listening.

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rabino
The domain name is pretty funny. Props.

~~~
visakanv
And you can sort talks by t-shirt color.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I wonder if there are any correlations between shirt colour and content - like
he [unconsciously] wears a red shirt when he's being less open with his
responses.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
I switch shirts every 5-6 videos, and we go down the list of videos in order
of votes, so shirt color is mostly uncorrelated with the content. If I'm doing
a longer or more in-depth video, then I might pick a specific shirt that goes
with the topic.

------
fuzzythinker
I don't get the inconsistent answer to site load time:

If you were an SEO of a large company, what would you include in your 2011
strategy? Optimise site speed, control of CMS, education program, internal
linking, social media

Should I be obsessing about load times? Slightly

Do site load times have an impact on Google rankings? No

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Page speed does have an impact on Google rankings. You should care about the
speed of your site not just because of your Google rankings, but because it
makes a huge difference to your user experience.

That's the hazard of this site. In summarizing to 1-2 words, some of the
nuance is lost.

------
sirdogealot
Great website and great idea in general! I love being able to read a concise
answer rather than watch a video when time is a constraint.

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gesman
Maybe make it: theshirtcutts.com ?

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KhalPanda
Excellent effort.

~~~
unwind
Agreed, that's a very large number of videos.

The lead-in copy on the landing page might need an iteration or two, "to help
struggling site owners understand their site in search" read very strangely to
me. I'm not a native speaker, though.

~~~
hagbardgroup
You're correct. It's not great copy. Also, 'struggling site owners' will not
understand these videos. Cut 'struggling' and 'their site' and it becomes:

"...to help site owners understand how Google search works..." or "...to help
site owners understand how their decisions affect their Google search
results..."

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whoismua
Nothing changes the fact that Google is your biggest competitor and they
control ranking, the ads and display. Google's ad clicks keep up each quarter
and your traffic down. (No, online traffic or search volume isn't increasing
by that much. Not even close)

Matt does a great job for Google buying them time but for webmasters he's
useless.

------
m4tthumphrey
It's as if Robin Van Persie and Will McKenzie (Simon Bird) had a baby.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Still better than when someone said I looked like Rick Moranis, so I'll take
it.

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keepkalm
I wouldn't worry about that too much.

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hagbardgroup
Instant search works great and is functional.

