Matt Cutts.
After seeing Elliot’s anxiety over his recent rebranding manifest into an open letter to Google’s SEO baron, Matt Cutts, we had to take action.
We pulled some admittedly lengthy strings, and were able to get Matt Cutts write a response to Elliot.
Not only that, but Matt Cutts also rolled a two-some, responding to Rick Schwartz and his subdomain saga as well.
Off to you, Matt!
“Greetings! Towards the end of PubCon, I noticed a lot of jibber-jabber articles talking about Google’s role in the passing of authority, allegedly interfering with titles in content and other esoteric stuff.
Historically, it has been kind of a wash when domain investors want exposure and when they want us to stop promoting their daily rants and raves. Personally, I am ok with either way, because not only I am not a domainer, but also I’ve done my best to squash domainer income with the introduction of Panda and other wildlife into the PPC game.
Before you hate me though, let me tell you this: Google all along professed that content is king, and to this day, this mantra still stands – with a small adjustment: all the content that we allow to be visible, is king.
So let me get things straight for those of you with comprehension skills: You might have a killer generic, for example Candy.com, but if we feel that it does not fit our model of monetization via the use of dedicated Google specialists, we might start cutting its importance a bit. Sure, you can still find that domain in Google, by doing a full .com search, but does it top the results for the keyword, as you expected? Hell no.
I’m not a mean person, not by any means. I love puppies, summertime and kids. I know domainers are good kids, so when I read stuff like subdomains being the solution of the future, I start believing you kids need a spanking.
I’ve told you already, that subdomains are dead as of 2007. We at Google, limit the stacked results of subdomains – silly extensions of a primary domain – to a handful, if that. No, I won’t give you the precise number because those of you who don’t work at Google aren’t worthy anyway, but I will tell you that if you hoped that hard.candy.com and chocolate.candy.com will top the results for “hard candy” and “chocolate candy” respectively, go ahead, search for them in Google. Let me know once you’re done, I have brunch at 10:00am Pacific.
Back on the subject of syndicated blogs.
The fact that some of you applied for inclusion in syndicated news, doesn’t mean we cannot take your feed and process it to suit our business model. If you have a Google+ account, that’s awesome! We are piping your content through that account, to give you more authority in keyword search – isn’t that what you wanted in the first place with syndication?
If you don’t have a Google+ account, we will make sure you do, in the future; to access your free Gmail account, we will ask you to create a matching Google+ that ensures full compliance to all future terms and conditions that weren’t in place in 2005, when you signed up.
And now a word of advice on the new tsunami of gTLDs: get used to them.
As we did with .CO and other “lesser” ccTLDs that are of equal importance to the .com as far as Google searches are concerned, we will do with the gTLDs – whether you like it or not. These gTLDs will rank the same – if not better – than other TLDs you’ve being toying with for the past 25 years. Sounds like a nightmare to some, well, that’s because it is!
Why that move, you may ask?
Because technology only moves forward, otherwise it’d be cool to use LED pocket calculators and bulb-powered AM/LW/SW radios – no FM for you!
I promised to keep it real and keep everyone informed – I never said I’d be pleasing to the ear, or that I’d make you all fuzzy inside. But I’m being brutally honest and therefore have to advise you to embrace the future as it unfolds. This way, you can be part of it, versus becoming whimpering kids whose chocolate pudding got spoiled.
To Elliot: write content about domain investing, and don’t worry about the rest, my friend. We will take care of it, and that’s a promise.
Wishing you all a productive week and get your Google+ account ready.
Matt.”
