The Matt Cutts Debunking Flowchart

May 31, 2011 at 2:54pm ET by Danny Sullivan

I’ve got a long-standing promise to Google’s Matt Cutts that I’d one day do a flowchart to illustrate his decision process about when he decides to debunk some crazy allegation against Google. With a bumper crop of debunking going on by Matt, it’s time to deliver on that promise. Below, the Matt Cutts Debunking Flowchart:

Dubbed “The Greenspan Of Google” by Businessweek recently, Matt’s officially the head of Google’s web spam fighting team. Unofficially, he serves as Google number one fire putter outer. For years, he’s debunked claims against Google, or at least tried to communicate the Google view, outside of Google’s regular PR channels.

Seriously, it’s been a pretty nutty week of crazy accusations leveled against Google. I won’t go into them, because I have my own flowchart of whether something is substantial enough to warrant investigation. If so, we dig into it. If not, we save our energy, grab some popcorn and watch Matt play PR damage control.

About The Author: Danny Sullivan is a Founding Editor of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also serves as Chief Content Officer for Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He has a personal blog called Daggle (and keeps his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan

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http://www.michael-louviere.com ELLO

This is perfect, I was already a fan of flow charts, but this goes beyond.
http://www.dcfinder.com/ Thomas Rosenstand

This is just my kind of humor :-)
http://mattcutts.com/blog/ Matt Cutts

I totally just made this my desktop wallpaper. ;)
http://www.agileinternetmarketing.com Kevin Burke

My chart would end at “Is he a nutjob?” Yes. They’re all nutjobs.
Michael J. Kovis

I spit my drink all over my monitors when I got to, “#$&^. Is it true?”
http://www.solardave.com Dugdale

Danny I love it!
http://nicholasorr.com Nicholas Orr

This is a fantastic flowchart, well done :)
http://virtuallymarj.com Marj Wyatt

Thanks for putting this flowchart together. My truly laugh-out-loud moment arrived at “am I bored?”

While I do have respect for Matt Cutt’s authority and knowledge, some of the goings on with Google’s methods of separating wheat from the chaff are so subjective that I’m not sure how they could program the fuzzy logic.

Like it or not, Google is a force which we must handle.
http://www.branchcommunications.co.uk B.C.

Love it give us more!
Haiqal Egan Rao

Frankly, the flowchart is too complicated… can you make it much simpler version?
http://imateski.blogspot.com/ Igor Mateski

This was a great read. Quite a way to start this day. Thanks for the fun stuff!
http://www.indihow.com I.H.

Seriously man! This flowchart is amazing!

Coming to think of it, isn’t this the most common strategy for everyone including politicians?
http://www.enovabiz.in Aniruddha Badola

Very soon we will see a Matt Cutts video debunking this Flowchart too!
I.S.

@ Haiqal Egan Rao ! Flow chart is to give simple view of complex question. Not sure how the flowchart became complex to you. lol !

I love this flow chart :)