SEOMoz caught up with Maile Ohye from Google and asked her some good questions about SEO and how Google indexes and ranks Websites. Take a look:

Matt Cutts, head of Web spam at Google, posted a very useful and informative video on the Webmaster channel on Youtube about how Google indexes urls that are specifically blocked by the individual site’s robots.txt file.

A Robots.txt file tells the search engines what to crawl and what not to crawl. If you don’t have something listed in the robots.txt file as “don’t crawl this” or “disallow” then it’s pretty much being indexed.

So here’s what Matt said. They get messages from angry Webmasters that say that Google violated their robots.txt file because they see their link in the search results. Matt explains that Google indeed listens to the robots.txt file but if people are linking to that particular page with anchor text that is helpful, Google will index it without actually going to the page, because the page as some value to people. Often times they will just have a page result without a description. If the page is indexed in the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) or in the Yahoo Directory, then Google might use the description from there to add it to the link.

In both instances Google has not gone to that page. The video is below. It’s worth the 4 1/2 minutes to watch it. Very informative and Matt even gives some suggestions on how to get the url out of the search index completely. But to be absolutely honest. If people are linking to that page that is blocked by your robots.txt file because it has some value, maybe you should open it up and let Google crawl it. It would most likely add value to your site.

Google has just released its latest open source endeavor – Google Chrome Frame.

Google Chrome frame allows IE users to choose (on sites using the plugin) whether they want to stay in IE or use the Chrome Javascript Engine.

We’re building Google Chrome Frame to help web developers deliver faster, richer applications like Google Wave. Recent JavaScript performance improvements and the emergence of HTML5 have enabled web applications to do things that could previously only be done by desktop software. One challenge developers face in using these new technologies is that they are not yet supported by Internet Explorer. Developers can’t afford to ignore IE — most people use some version of IE — so they end up spending lots of time implementing work-arounds or limiting the functionality of their apps.

With Google Chrome Frame, developers can now take advantage of the latest open web technologies, even in Internet Explorer. From a faster Javascript engine, to support for current web technologies like HTML5’s offline capabilities and <canvas>, to modern CSS/Layout handling, Google Chrome Frame enables these features within IE with no additional coding or testing for different browser versions.

<Chromium Blog>

I‘ve seen this discussion happening across the Internet, in forums, on social media and on blogs. Paid posts, are they bad? Maybe. But how are they different from a radio talk show host giving his pitch for a sponsor of the show? Nothing really. Google’s new fight isn’t against spam, though I’m sure that fight is still ongoing, it’s against bloggers who accept compensation for their posting positive reviews of the product without disclosure. Google sees this as a problem because the search giant’s algorithm relies heavily on links to and from sites for ranking purposes. If you as the blogger are pushing a product you aren’t providing unbiased value to the readers and to the Googlebot when you send a link to a sponsor.

Personally, if I review something, I do not promise a positive review. I promise a fair and unbiased view of the product and how it can or can’t benefit my readers. This is my own personal preference and I stand by it 100%. Other bloggers out there do accept paid sponsorships, and though I’m not a big fan, that’s their prerogative. I personally feel that bloggers need to find ways to pay the bills and if writing a PR post for a product or company helps in doing that, then all the more power to them. What I do have an issue with is the bloggers that don’t disclose what their plan is on their blog. They decide to accept compensation, but don’t alert people that it involves a kickback to them.

On the Goldstein Media blog, we have some relevant ads on our sidebar. We feel that these ads are relevant to our readers and don’t detract from the overall value of the blog. When a blogger hides affiliate links in their posts and writes complete fluff pieces for sponsors without alerting their readers to what they are doing. That is wrong.

Disclosure is key. WebProNews interviewed Michael Gray about this very topic:

A recent article on Search Engine Land, discussed Google’s assertion that the length of a domain registration doesn’t matter to a Websites rank as some people think.

Search Engine Land quotes three Google employees, one being Matt Cutts, they all downplay the effect of registration length on ranks but none of them definitively say that it doesn’t affect the rankings.

Google employee John Mueller suggesting in a Google Webmaster Help forum thread that Google doesn’t look at the length of a domain registration:

A bunch of TLDs do not publish expiration dates — how could we compare domains with expiration dates to domains without that information? It seems that would be pretty hard, and likely not worth the trouble. Even when we do have that data, what would it tell us when comparing sites that are otherwise equivalent? A year (the minimum duration, as far as I know) is pretty long in internet-time .

But let’s look at some more evidence. Earlier this year, Danny spoke with Google’s Matt Cutts about a variety of domain/link/SEO issues. In light of the claims from domain registrars that longer domain registrations are good for SEO, Danny specifically asked “Does Domain Registration Length Matter?” Matt’s reply:

To the best of my knowledge, no search engine has ever confirmed that they use length-of-registration as a factor in scoring. If a company is asserting that as a fact, that would be troubling.

/…/

So we have, essentially, three recent Google statements about the length of a domain registration and its impact on search rankings. None of them specifically say, “No, it doesn’t matter at all.”

Ultimately, the full SEO power given to the registration length of a domain probably doesn’t affect the rankings that much. But does it hurt to register a domain for longer? I don’t think so. Regardless of the SEO juice, I feel that it is important to have your domain registered for multiple years, especially if it’s your main domain.

Goldstein Media owns quite a few domains, some we’re using for testing landing micro-sites,. other domains were bought for an idea that went by the wayside. For the domains that we’re experimenting with, we usually register for only 1 year. The more important domains, ones dealing with our brand and such, we have them registered for 4-5 years. The main reasoning behind the longer registration is less for SEO than for the fact that we don’t want to risk losing our identity online.

Below is the video done by Matt Cutts for the Webmaster Center channel on Youtube:

On the Google posted a video on its YouTube Channel a very creative ad to appeal to the college crowd. In the ad a boy uses Google Docs to draft a note to ask a girl he met in French 101 out on a date. He uses the social sharing features to enlist the help of his friends in drafting the note. It’s a very cute demonstration of how Google Docs can be used for collaboration.

Today Gmail, Google’s email client, went down. As a matter of fact it’s still down (4:30pm 9/1/09). The minute Gmail went down it seemed as though the whole world jumped on Twitter and asked in some fashion…”Is GMail Down.” Then started the freaking out. I did a quick search on the term GMail in Twitter search and people all around the world were out of their minds without the Google email service.

Drew Olanoff, best known for the #blamedrewscancer Twitter meme, did a video in 2007 about GMail being down. It’s very apropos right now.

Enjoy… what are you going to do check your Gmail? <Insert evil laugh>

<image credit: chattahbox.com>

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team, gave a talk at Wordcamp San Francisco this past May (5/30/09). He points out the do’s and don’ts for keeping a blog.

Check out his video below:

Google opened up its latest search engine update to the world yesterday. Though most of the changes are under the  hood and the basic user interface is the same, some subtle changes are occuring. One of which appears to be the the weight that social media profiles and pages rank in the SERPS.

Patricio Robles over at Econsultancy writes:

As you can see, there aren’t many noticeable changes to the UI. In fact, you probably won’t notice much difference at all. According to Google’s Matt Cutts, “this update is primarily under the hood” and has involved “rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure“.

And yes, that means that there will be some changes in site rankings. From my limited initial tests, the impact on rankings seems subtle — most of the time.

One exception appears to be social web results. For instance, certain high-profile Facebook Pages appear to be receiving a major boost in the rankings with Caffeine. One commenter on the Google Webmaster Central blog also noted “I’ve noticed more Twitter pages in the results with this version of Google“.

I decided to test this for myself. Using the sandbox I did a search for my name. Sure enough at the #2 spot was my twitter page. When I searched for my company’s name (Goldstein Meda) I noticed another change. The map results were farther down the page. And though a few random results popped in my Twitter account for my business still showed up in the results.

Though there are some subtle differences, I have yet to see anything jaw dropping. The higher ranking positions of social media profiles and pages does give more weight to having a presence on some of the more influential social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin  and YouTube.

In my opinion this is only the beginning social media’s impact on online business and SEO.

I’d love to hear what you think of these developments. Post your thoughts in the comments below.

In the most recent issue of Wired magazine, there is a rather lengthy article on Google and the US government’s fear of the search giant. The main question that arises is whether or not Google is Evil. Their mantra is “Don’t Be Evil,” but is the 11 year old company sticking to this slogan? I want to hear what you have to say leave your thoughts in the comments.