Google’s Cutts Talks Structured Data Beta, Mobile Site Speed Need, Penalty Notices To Get Example Links & More

Last night at SMX Advanced, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts was on stage to answer questions about Google search and webmaster topics with Danny Sullivan. We covered the session in live blog format and pulled out several key points.

Of all my years watching Matt Cutts talk, I believe it has been over ten years now, I have never seen Matt reveal so much new information and announce so many new things in a single hour at a conference.

Here are the highlights from last night, with links to those individual stories:

• Google Payday Loan Algorithm: Google Search Algorithm Update To Target Spammy Queries – Google launched a new algorithm that is currently rolling out to target more spammy industries and some of the “illegal” SEO and linking tactics they use.
• Google’s Panda Dance: Matt Cutts Confirms Panda Rolls Out Monthly Over 10 Of 30 Days – Similar to the Google Dance, which was how Google pushed out new indexes in the early 2000s, Panda updates are typically pushed out monthly and run over a 10 day period.
• Google Webmaster Notifications Now To Show Example URLs – Matt promises that most, if not all, manual penalty notification emails from Webmaster Tools will include a few examples of the problem so webmasters can better understand what to look for to fix their issues.
• Google: Site Speed Penalty Coming To Mobile Web Sites – In addition to the mobile SEO demotions Google announced yesterday morning, Google will also add a ranking factor to mobile search results based on the site speed time of your mobile web pages. I have to assume that speed is a larger factor on mobile than desktop, but that speed time was not disclosed.
• Google Structured Data Dashboard Beta – Want to test out a new dashboard in Google Webmaster Tools to see errors and reporting on your webpage’s structured data? You can sign up for the beta over here.

Finally, here is the full hour video of the chat with Matt Cutts and Danny Sullivan.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.