Google’s Matt Cutts: Black Hat & Link Spammers Less Likely To Show Up In Search Results After Summer

A video from Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, today answers some of the questions about what webmasters and SEOs should expect in the near future in regards to SEO. The primary question Matt asked and answered was, “What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?” Matt […]

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matt-cutts-seo-futureA video from Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, today answers some of the questions about what webmasters and SEOs should expect in the near future in regards to SEO.

The primary question Matt asked and answered was, “What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?”

Matt addressed 10 points, all summarized at the end as helping improve the search results by awarding the good sites and hurting the spammers and black hats in the search results. Here are the 10 points Matt addressed in his video, followed by the video itself:

1.  Penguin Updates

The next generation Penguin update, Penguin 4 (AKA Penguin 2.0), which is expected to launch in the next few weeks, will go deeper and have more of an impact than the first version of that Penguin update. So expect that we will hear more of an outcry from the SEO community when this does launch.

2.  Advertorials

Earlier this year, Google went after some websites for using advertorials as a means to artificially inflate their link profile. Matt Cutts said Google will soon take a stronger stance against those using advertorials in a means that violates their webmaster guidelines.

3.  Spammy Queries

While queries that tend to be spammy in nature, such as [pay day loans] or some pornographic related queries, were somewhat less likely to be a target for Google’s search spam team – Matt Cutts said Google is more likely to look at this area in the near future. He made it sound like these requests are coming from outside of Google and thus Google wants to address those concerns with these types of queries.

4.  Going Upstream

Matt Cutts said they want to go more “upstream” to deter link spammers and the value of the links they are acquiring from the sources. This seems to imply to me that Google will go after more link networks, like they’ve done in the past.

5.  Sophisticated Link Analysis

Matt promises that Google is going to get even better at their link analysis. Google’s head of search spam explained that Google is in the early stages of this much more “sophisticated” link analysis software but when it is released, they will be much better at understanding links.

6.  Improvements On Hacked Sites

Google has done a lot of work with hacked sites and their index, specifically labeling the search results of potentially hacked sites, removing those sites and also warnings webmasters about the hack. Matt said Google is working on rolling out a new feature to better detect hacked sites in the upcoming months. Cutts also added they plan on improving webmaster communication in regards to hacked sites.

7.  Authority Boost

Google hopes to give sites that are an authority in a specific industry, community or space a ranking boost. So if you are an authority in the medical or travel spaces, Google hopes that related queries will return your site above less authoritative web sites.

8.  Panda Sympathy

While many sites have been impacted by the Google Panda update, Matt Cutts said that many of those impacted are borderline cases. Google is looking for ways to “soften” that impact by looking at other quality metrics to move those on the line to not be impacted by the Panda algorithm.

9.  Domain Clusters In SERPs

The number of clusters of the same domain name showing on the first page of Google’s search results should lessen this year. Google’s Matt Cutts said they want to make the search results on the first page even more diverse, but when you click to the second results page, you may be more likely to see clustered results from the same domain name. Google is constantly tweaking how many search results from the same domain name show up on a single page of search results.

10.  Improved Webmaster Communication

As always, Google is always saying they want to improve their communication with webmasters. Matt Cutts said to expect even more detailed examples within webmaster notifications received within Google Webmaster Tools.

Toward the end of this video, Matt Cutts explains the purpose of all these changes is to reduce the number of webmasters doing black hat spam tactics from showing up, while giving smaller businesses that are more white hat the chances to rank better.

Here is the video for you all to watch:


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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