January 15, 2008

Google Pet Video, LOLCats and SES New York Mystery

If you're a Matt Cutts Gadgets Google and SEO blog reader, you know the feline Amy Cutts, his pet video co-star. To see her, click here.

To get SEW Expert Eric Enge's description of Amy and the vid, click here.

Sure, Amy can act, but can she learn search marketing?

At SES New York, apparently Amy can in this mystery Super Session.

Search for LOLCats?

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:20 AM | Permalink

July 18, 2007

Matt Cutts Seeking Search Bugs

Matt Cutts is asking for anyone that is aware of any search engine bugs to post them in comments on his blog. Apparently he has a meeting tomorrow about the subject and would like to get as many listed and worked on as he can find.

So if you have come across something and want to have it addressed now is your chance. Note he is not looking for posts asking why your site dropped etc. This is a call for legitimate bugs.

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:48 PM | Permalink

April 19, 2007

Google Ad VP Spamming Google On The Side?

Threadwatch has outed Tim Armstrong, Google Ad VP, for his involvement with Associated Content, that seems to be a content generating company making money from AdSense on dubious keyword rich content.

ClickZ ran an article about Associated Content earlier this month.

Guess he is not Matt Cutts' favorite Googler given the fact Associated Content was found to be buying links.

Have any comments? Let's add them to the discussion on link buying.

Posted by Frank Watson at 11:03 AM | Permalink

November 8, 2006

Google's Consumer Packaged Goods Blog

Threadwatch reported that Google launched a new blog at http://google-cpg.blogspot.com/. The blog is named the Google CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) blog. What they write about are marketing ideas that they find on the web and they use at Google. As an example, they wrote about the Coke + Mentos viral video.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:10 AM | Permalink

September 27, 2006

Evil Matt Cutts: Matt's Evil Twin Brother

Spotted via SEO Home, it appears someone launched an alter ego to Matt Cutts's blog at evilmattcutts.com. You got to admit, this is funny. The picture, the reworded blog posts, and the concept. One example blog post is named How to Verify Google Bot, then Kill and cook him. Who owns the site? Well, I know who owns the domain, http://whois.domaintools.com/evilmattcutts.com.

Matt, what happened to your front tooth?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:41 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

The Inside Scoop from Search Bloggers

The major search engines all have unofficial bloggers talking about what's going on in their respective companies. At a recent SES session, search-blog stars Jeremy Zawodny, Gary Price, Matt Cutts and Niall Kennedy all revealed their modus operandi, and guest writer Sara Holoubek was there to capture their insights for today's SearchDay article, Expose: Search Engine Bloggers Tell All.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 7:44 PM | Permalink

August 14, 2006

Matt Cutts Confesses To Being GoogleGuy

In Monday Morning Roundup, Rand Fishkin writes:

Did anyone blog about Matt outing himself as GoogleGuy during SES? I believe his exact words were "I backed into that position."

Nope, Rand -- I was surprised about the lack of reaction and blogging to that myself. I'm still doing post-show catch-up, but it hardly seemed to catch any buzz. Perhaps one of the industry's oldest secrets -- Matt Cutts being GoogleGuy -- was no longer a secret to most any longer.

I moderated the panel, and the confession came out when a member of the audience flat out asked Matt if he was GoogleGuy. Matt hesitated just a moment, and I could swear I could almost hear the internal debate of "should I finally confess or not." And then he did, saying as Rand notes that he sort of backed into being the GoogleGuy who posts on forums and blogs. Matt then added that today, GoogleGuy might be one of many different people from Google commenting in public areas.

Matt's been blogging for just over a year now, and it's been great to have him out under his own name. Personally, while I love the Google Guy name, I sort of hope it gets retired. I'd rather have Googlers taking part in conversations under their own names than through anonymous handles. Plus, it would help avoid things where the named person might comment on something they've also posted under an anonymous handle. As I wrote last year:

Matt Cutts, posting over Threadwatch and sounding pretty in sync with GoogleGuy, explains that msn.com is a PR8 site and points to the Future PageRank checker at SEO Tools as a way to see this. (At this point, you're asking "Isn't Matt Cutts GoogleGuy?" For the record, Matt's never publicly laid claim to being GoogleGuy. But since Matt's more active on commenting with things these days, I think it's well time that GoogleGuy step forward with a real name, so that if they are one and the same, there's isn't confusion that two different people are talking. Honestly, at some point we'll have someone citing GoogleGuy, then someone citing Matt against GoogleGuy, which is absurd if they are the same. I and many others do know the real identity of GoogleGuy. I think it's well time everyone knows and hope GoogleGuy will step forward).

By the way, if you missed the panel, Blogging for the search engines from Melanie Colburn at Searchblog is a very nice summary of it. Matt also made many new friends at the last conference and today blogs on how to tell who the real ones are :) That includes these two founding members of his fan club, complete with T-shirts. He also gets search god status on the new Men Of SEO blog.

Postscript: WebmasterWorld's Brett Tabke pinged me to say that Matt's been wearing a "Google Guy" name badge at PubCon for the past two years now, and Thomas Bindl notes this was the case last November at the show, as well. So I guess Matt's been out as GoogleGuy long before this. Then again, despite wearing that name badge in front of plenty of people, he still wasn't fessing up to it when I or others would ask him about going public. And over at Rand's blog in the comments, Matt's suggesting that he was answering a different question.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:54 AM | Permalink

August 9, 2006

The Google Doctor Interviewed

Philipp Lenssen links to an interview of the Google Doctor, Taraneh Razavi at Blogs for Companies. The interview really goes over more about why the Doctor started a blog at Google, then anything else. So you know, Sergey Brin suggested to her that she start her blog at http://dr-razavi.blogspot.com/. Other than that, she helped improve the nutrition and health of the meals provided at Google, and of course, does the day to day doctor duties at Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:56 AM | Permalink

August 8, 2006

August 2, 2006

More Matt Google SEO Videos: Google Terminology & More

Matt Cutts from Google released two more videos, as part of his SEO questions on video collection. These two new videos are:

- Does Webspam use Google Analytics? - 5 minutes and 11 seconds - Does Google Analytics play a part in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)? - When does Google detect duplicate content, and how wide is the range? - I want to mark my page as porn in SafeSearch–what do you recommend? - Is it okay to make hyperlinks in option elements? - Google Terminology - 4 minutes and 40 seconds - What's the difference between an index update, an algorithm update, and a data refresh? - I also discuss these definitions in terms of June/July 27th as much as I can.

Postscript From Danny: On Google Analytics, Matt says that this data is not used for web spam detection purposes and to the best of his knowledge, not by others in Google. However, I recently asked Google for clarification on this, in the wake of them NOT excluding the possibility that Google Checkout data might be used for a variety of purposes. I've yet to get a response back. At this point, my assumption is that while Google is probably using things like Google Toolbar data and Google Analytics data in ways beyond just reporting information back to the individual users.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:34 AM | Permalink

August 1, 2006

Google's Matt Cutts Answers Questions On Google Video

Matt Cutts has released six video sessions so far, over the past two days at his blog. They all answers questions sent to him on the topic of search engine optimization. Most of the videos are about five minutes long, you don't have to necessarily watch Matt talk, you can just listen (there is not much going on in the background). Here is a break down of the video SEO sessions:

Session 1: Quality of a Good Site, 5 minutes and 40 seconds. "Matt Cutts answers Google questions: - Does Sitemaps depend on pageviews? - What are the top things to do in SEO? - Should I use bold or strong tags?"

Session 2: Myths, Large Site Launches, and Google Images, 4 minutes 10 seconds. "Matt Cutts answers Google questions: - Myths: 1) sites on the same server, 2) IP, or 2) including off-domain JavaScript - Launching sites with millions of pages: how should I do it best? - Google images: updates on the horizon, and current Google Images technology."

Session 3: Optimize for Search Engines or Users?, 4 minutes and 25 seconds. "Matt Cutts answers Google questions: - Which is more important: search engine optimization (SEO) or end user optimization? - What spam detection tools would you recommend? - Does cleanliness of code (W3C) help at all?"

Session 4: Static vs. Dynamic urls, 4 minutes and 30 seconds. "Matt Cutts answers Google questions: - Static vs. Dynamic urls: does PageRank flow the same to both? What pitfalls should I avoid with dynamic urls? - Can Sitemaps alert webmasters when their site has been hacked? - Can I do geotargetting within Google's Quality Guidelines?"

Session 5: How to structure a site?, 4 minutes and 46 seconds. "Matt Cutts answers Google questions: - Merging acquired domains with 301s? - How to create a site architecture with themes and keywords? - My urls have too many parameters--can I serve up static HTML to Googlebot instead? - How to do split A/B testing?"

Session 6: Supplemental Results, 4 minutes and 12 seconds. "Matt Cutts answers Google questions: - Supplemental Results - Should I worry about results estimates for 1) supplemental results 2) using the site: operator 3) with negated terms and 4) special syntax such as intitle: ? Answer: No. That's pretty far off the beaten path. - Why do 301s take so long to be reflected in supplemental results? It's been months. - I started appearing in the supplemental results in May--should I be worried?"

Great job Matt, really appreciated by the SEOs and SEMs here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:28 AM | Permalink

June 13, 2006

A Look At 20 Googlers Via Orkut

Philipp Lenssen complied a list of 20 Googler Orkut profiles. Orkut is Google's social networking software, and many Googlers have profiles and accounts with Orkut. Some of the 20 compiled by Philipp include; Sergey Brin, Adam Bosworth, Jeff Huber, David Krane, Marissa Mayer and more. Nice work!

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:47 AM | Permalink

December 27, 2005

Google Recruits Creator of Python; Blog from Google Spain Manager Debuts; New Compilation of Blogs by Googlers

Here are a couple of Google items that we spotted on two of of my favorite blogs that focus most of their efforts on tracking Google.

+ Dirson, posts about another successful recruitment of progammer by Google. It appears that Guido van Rossum, the creator of the Python programming language, is now a Google employee.

+ Dirson also reports that Miguel de la Reina (the manager of Google Spain) has launched a blog (in Spanish, of course) titled: Googelizados.

And speaking of Googlers...

+ Philipp Lenssen from Google Blogoscoped, posts about a new compilation of blogs by Googlers. It comes from the editor of The Google Planet which is a digest of blog posts by Google employees.

Btw, one of my favorite non-search sites of 2005 also comes from Philipp. If you've never visited his highly addictive, Games for the Brain site, it's more than worth a look and some time.

Also, my previous post about email services, includes a link to another favorite Google blog, Nathan Weinberg's Inside Google.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:06 PM | Permalink

November 29, 2005

Blog On French Search Industry

Via Xooglers, former Googler Franck Poisson is running a French-language blog that covers the search industry, obviously of interest to anyone watching search and France. Long standing site French search site Abondance is well worth checking out, as well. The new Multilingual Search Blog is another resource French search watchers will also want to visit.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:18 AM | Permalink

November 25, 2005

Former Google Brand Manager Blogging Days At Google

Spotted via Google Weblog (unofficial), Xooglers is a new blog run by Google's former director of consumer marketing and brand management, Doug Edwards.

It promises to be "a gathering spot for ex-Googlers to reminisce and comment on the latest developments in search." So far, it looks to be Edwards only.

He introduces himself here and potential plans to do a book, but prefers for now to tell his Google story via a blog. Elsewhere in the blog, you can read of him answering Sergey Brin's tough hiring question and his view Google cofounder Larry Page isn't worried about being polite if he knows he's right.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:10 AM | Permalink

November 10, 2005

Matt Cutts Banned On Google? And Oct. 2005 Jagger Update Winds Down

The Oct. 2005 Google Jagger update saga that has sucked the life out of so many (but not all; some are blissfully unimpacted by it) seems to be ending. Indeed, so says Google's Matt Cutts in his Jagger winding down post. But Matt, if the update is over and bugs worked out, why's your blog banned on Google?

The article I just posted for Search Engine Watch members (go on, support the site - become a member and get to read the full story) goes into detail about the situation, but here are the highlights for everyone.

He's not really banned, but less savvy site owners could easily get that impression.
Dave Naylor presents the evidence in Jagger3 hahahaha, where he shows how a search for mattcutts.com brings up no matches. That's often a sign that a site has been banned.
He's not banned, however, as a search for matt cutts shows. You'll see how he's ranking in the top results for that, which wouldn't happen if he was banned.
But wait! Notice how he ranks twice, with listings for both www.mattcutts.com and mattcutts.com! That's a canonical error -- my favorite hated word and problem that I wrote about earlier. It's Google getting confused about which domain name to use for Matt's site (and other sites as well).
Overall, another reason for what I said earlier -- it's overdue for search engines to let us register all our domain names directly with them and indicate the ones they should be using.

Also, by winding down, that doesn't mean winding down on Google itself. Matt's post wrote that you'd find it in action if you went to the http://66.102.9.104/ data center. Over time -- the coming days -- changes will migrate to all the Google data centers.

In some related notes, Barry at Search Engine Roundtable points to Update Saga. Part zillion over at WebmasterWorld, where people are wondering if the update has come to an end. It also notes that GoogleGuy has warned of a PageRank/backlink update to happen between now and the end of the year.

Thoughts on Jagger: Recips Got Hammered, Trust Trumps All from Andy Hagans at the Link Building Blog is a nice, short piece summing up what he things were the two major changes in the update.

First, reciprocal links don't see to work as well (What are they? Want to discuss? check out this SEW Forum thread: Reciprocal Linking ? Dead or Alive?). Second, sites with authority/TrustRank seem to do better (What's that? Check out Yahoo My Web: An eBay For Knowledge).

Want to discuss or comment? Visit our SEW Forum thread, Oct. 2005 Google Update "Jagger". C'mon by Matt -- tell us what's going on :)

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:04 AM | Permalink

November 9, 2005

Yahoo's Ass Kicking Statue Controversy

This was one of those, "should I skip it" decisions, but I did find it interesting. Phillip at Google Blogoscoped in Yahoo in Battle Mode summarizes how Yahoo's mail team was given a statue (yep, there's even a picture) for "kicking an enemy's ass." That would be Google's bottom being whacked, specifically.

Phillip then points to Google's Kevin Fox having long commentary on the statue. Kevin used to be at Yahoo, and he does a compare and contrast feeling that Google's about making better products while Yahoo's focused on "how to beat Google" and finds the competition goes too far with the statue's comparison to Britain fighting Nazi Germany.

The comments after Kevin's post go all over the place and are fun to read -- pro-Yahoo, anti-Yahoo, pro-Google, anti-Google. Phillip also points to two Yahoo employees who comment on the statue as well (Ryan Kennedy suggests a toned-down description for the statue; this employee prefers the "be humble" approach).

Yahoo's new email interface is way, way cool (double verified by checking with my wife, who is a regular user) -- but honestly, the old system was already kicking Google's butt for the simple fact that anyone could sign-up for it without getting someone to send you an invite or having to get text messaged a secret code. When Gmail's freely open to anyone, then let the weigh-up really take place.

Speaking of statues, how about Yahoo putting a little message on the Bob's Big Boy statue that Chris and I came across in one of the Yahoo buildings when visiting this summer. I'll see about getting the photo off Chris's phone -- I made him stand there and take it. But it looks just like this, except the hamburger was replaced with the Inktomi logo.

Bob's an old friend I remember well, from my days of visiting Inktomi. He was in the lobby, and I'd sit next to him waiting for someone to come meet me.

If memory serves, Inktomi founder Eric Brewer bought him to represent the serving/caching service that Inktomi used to provide. When Yahoo bought Inktomi, Bob came over -- and apparently was nearly tossed out until someone gave him a home.

He deserves a better home and maybe his own message devoted to the Yahoo web search team -- those from Inktomi, plus the AltaVista and FAST/AllTheWeb vets. They assembled a great product that directly rivals Google's core search results. Heck, put Bob out in the main entrance of Yahoo! Just make the message praising the efforts without dissing the competition, and I suppose everyone will be happy.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:58 AM | Permalink

October 21, 2005

The MSN PageRank 2 Controversy & Search Engines Needing To Offer Domain Management Tools

As part of the current Google update underway, it's been noticed that MSN now has a PageRank score of 2. What's the deal, Google -- decide to pull a little love away from MSN? Not so, says Google's Matt Cutts -- they're actually a PR8. Then why do you see a PR2 score when you go to MSN? Let's break it down, as well as revisit the oft-desired need for search engines to allow site owners to tell them directly which domains should be treated as the same.

Visit MSN at http://www.msn.com with the Google Toolbar installed, and you'll see a PR2 score reported.
MSN.com down to pagerank 2! at WebmasterWorld has some of the discussion this sparked, where the anonymous GoogleGuy from Google puts the blame on redirection that MSN is doing. Look at http://msn.com, and you'll see a PR8 score is reported, we're told.
OK, but if you try that, you get redirected to http://www.msn.com, where it's still PR2.
Answer? You need to get the Google PageRank score for msn.com in another way than trying to reach that page, since the redirection will send you to what's technically a different page, the home page of www.msn.com
How? Google's Matt Cutts, posting over Threadwatch and sounding pretty in sync with GoogleGuy, explains that msn.com is a PR8 site and points to the Future PageRank checker at SEO Tools as a way to see this. (At this point, you're asking "Isn't Matt Cutts GoogleGuy?" For the record, Matt's never publicly laid claim to being GoogleGuy. But since Matt's more active on commenting with things these days, I think it's well time that GoogleGuy step forward with a real name, so that if they are one and the same, there's isn't confusion that two different people are talking. Honestly, at some point we'll have someone citing GoogleGuy, then someone citing Matt against GoogleGuy, which is absurd if they are the same. I and many others do know the real identity of GoogleGuy. I think it's well time everyone knows and hope GoogleGuy will step forward).
Run a test for msn.com using the checker, and you'll get a list of the PageRank scores reported by various Google datacenters, including the server that feeds the toolbar display. All of them are PR8.
Again, you can't see these scores showing up in your browser when trying to go to msn.com, because you get redirected to www.msn.com, which has a different PR score.

All this brings us back to the issue of redirection. MSN is doing a 302 temporary redirect from msn.com to www.msn.com, which can confuse search engines into knowing if they should be treated at the same site. A 301 permanent redirect would be preferred.

But more preferred than that, life would be a lot easier if site owners could simply register all the various domains that may resolve to their "main" domain with Google and other search engines, rather than them having to guess.

People have been wanting this for ages. C'mon Google and Yahoo! You've both made moves to let us submit sitemaps and URLs to be crawled. Let's get with it so we can register domains with you and how they should be treated through some type of program. It so long overdue. That's especially so given that after the last indexing summit, as I've written, the search engines were unable to unify on any common treatment of dealing with redirects.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:21 AM | Permalink

October 13, 2005

Google's Onsite Dentist Is A Hoax!

It turns out there is no onsite dentist as Google, as we and others reported yesterday. Yeah, you got us! Google Blogoscope's got the official denial from Google over here. Those worried about the dental hygiene of Googlers can relax to know onsite visiting dental service for them is still available.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:50 AM | Permalink

October 12, 2005

Google Tooth: Google's Onsite Dentist

If you're going to give your employees free meals, I guess you've got to give them a dentist to take care of the aftermath. I'm not sure if the dental work is free, but via SiliconBeat, you can read more about Google's full-time dentist Dr. Sam Gustard and see pictures of his clinic on his blog, That's The Tooth.

The initial post covers Googlers giving him a "Google Tooth (beta)" logo and why it's cheaper for the company to have a dentist on site than have those employees spending hours going offsite for dental work. Plus, what if you get a toothache during a key product release?

OK, but honestly -- somehow other companies manage to get by with employees making use of personal time to visit a dentist and managing to maintain good enough dental hygiene that an unexpected emergency doesn't stop products from shipping.

Then again, if the money's flowing, who wouldn't want to have a company giving you easy access to a dentist, especially if it's free.

Postscript: Turns out, this is a hoax. More details in Google's Onsite Dentist Is A Hoax!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:24 AM | Permalink

September 23, 2005

Recapping Official Search Engine Blogs

Search Engine Blogs as Public Relations Tools from Loren Baker over at Search Engine Journal is a nice overview of how the various major search engines are turning more and more to blogs as a communication tool, with continuing unofficial help from employee blogs such as those from Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny and Google's Matt Cutts (hey, Google, get his blog listed in your Blogs By Googlers section on the Google Blog already!).

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:10 AM | Permalink

September 8, 2005

Mac Mozilla Chief Mike Pinkerton Joins Google Firefox Team

Via Dirson, news that Mike Pinkerton of the Mozilla Mac browser project is jumping over to Google's "Firefox" team. Pinkerton suggests it may mean more Mac love for Google users.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:42 AM | Permalink

August 10, 2005

Google's Matt Cutts Launches Blog Google software engineer Matt Cutts is well known to our readers, attendees of our SES shows to those who read up on search issues everywhere. Matt's now launched a new blog where he's sharing stories of being on the front lines of Google indexing and quality control issues, among other topics.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:34 PM | Permalink

March 30, 2005

Google Employee On 20 Percent Time

Many of you have heard about the "20 percent time" Google employees are allowed to spend on anything they want. In Google 20%, Google software developer Joe Beda blogs his personal views on how it works.

It's an interesting short read on how people may move between project teams in a "fluid" manner, how two teams might be allowed to work on similar projects in hopes things will ultimately be resolved, and how having 20 percent time isn't just a time to goof off. Do what you want, but do something interesting, Beda seems to say:

Heck, I don't have a good 20% project yet and I need one. If I don't come up with something I'm sure it could negatively impact my review.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:45 AM | Permalink

March 8, 2005

Fired Google Blogger Gets a New Job

Mark Jen, the former Google employee who was fired for blogging, has a new job and it's also in Mountain View. According to Zawodny and News.com, Jen has landed a job at Plaxo, Plaxo, a contact management service. I wonder if one of Jen's responsibilities will be posting to the Plaxo blog? It hasn't been updated since December.

Posted by Gary Price at 7:55 AM | Permalink

March 3, 2005

From Redmond to Mountain View: Top Windows Architect Joins Google

Microsoft Watch reports that Marc Lucovsky, a key Windows architect has left Microsoft after 16 years and is now a Googler. More in the article: Microsoft Loses Key Windows Architect to Google.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:43 PM | Permalink

February 17, 2005

Fired Googler Mark Jen Speaks, Again

First, Mark Jen shared some thoughts about his firing from Google with Jeremy. Second, Jen posted his story on his ninteyninezeroes blog.

Yesterday, he engaged in a Q&A style interview with Juan Carlos Perez of the IDG News Service: Fired Google blogger reflects, moves on.

IDGNS: What did Google tell you about ending your employment there?

Jen: They've never given me a straight answer. I've requested an official statement or reason as far as why I was terminated, but I wasn't given any such reason. Of course, it's well within their rights to refuse to give me a reason. I was an at-will employee in the state of California, so they really don't need to give me a reason for terminating me. I definitely was surprised at being terminated. It's a shocking thing.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:55 AM | Permalink

February 11, 2005

Mark Jen Posts His Story

Former Google employee Mark Jen as posted his story "direct from the source" about his terminiation on his ninteyninezeroes blog. Jen does not offer specifics as to what Google said to him but does say, "on january 28th, 2005, I was terminated from Google. Either directly or indirectly, my blog was the reason." Jen adds that his firing came as a "great shock" since just two days before his firing, Google reviewed his blog and he removed the material (financials, future product info, etc.) that Google didn't made public.

Other things we learn:

+ He agrees with Scoble, about waiting longer before starting his blog.

+ Jen felt like he was joining a startup company.

+ Jen says that this has been a great learning experience and mentions one (of many) things he's learned is that he's, "willing to take a stand" for what he believes."

+ Jen writes that he understands where Google is coming from but doesn't agree with their stance.

+ He believes, "blogging is the next big thing on the internet" and "companies that are confident in their offerings should let employees spread the word."

+ He says that Google is a public company and is not either good or evil.

+ Jen ends his post by reminding readers that he's got talent and is now looking for a job.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:49 PM | Permalink

February 9, 2005

Former Google Employee Mark Jen Was Fired For Blogging

Yahoo blogvangelist Jeremy Zawodny has confirmation that Mark Jen was fired from Google because of his blogging activities. Until now, this was suspected but not confirmed. A Chat with Mark Jen from Jeremy provides more. More background on Jen's blog in this past post, Mark Jen, Controversial Google Blogger, At Google No More.

Jen told Jeremy he didn't believe he'd done anything wrong and that the interest in his blog took him by surprise. Jeremy then goes on to look at how Yahoo has had to consider issues of employees blogging and what to allow.

He notes that he's removed a few posts and made changes at his own blog as part of the process of finding out what the "line" is in terms of what's acceptable and that Yahoo is working on formal guidelines.

He calls on Google to do the same, and I'd encourage that. It's somewhat amazing to read views on some blogs suggesting that employees of a company -- whether posting on their personal blogs or not -- might have some type of right to say whatever they want about a company but not suffer any type of repercussion.

Forget blogs. Does anyone think that a company employee could say anything they want about a company in a public forum, to a media outlet or other public venue without limitation? I'd say not at all.

Rules are definitely helpful, so that everyone knows where they stand.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:03 AM | Permalink

February 8, 2005

Mark Jen, Controversial Google Blogger, At Google No More

Mark Jen's had a short but eventful stay at Google. Google Blogoscope noted earlier today a rumor that he'd left the company, updated later with a confirmation from Google. Google tells me directly that Jen's no longer a Google employee as well. Why? The company declined to provide more specifics.

Fired? That's what someone claiming to be an anonymous Google employee over at Google Blogoscope said:

I regret to inform you that Mark Jen was fired from Google on Friday, January 28th. I don't have any details, but I can tell you that he was quietly let go.

The post goes on to express upset that Google may have fired Jen to silence him.

Was he fired? Did he decide to leave? Perhaps we'll hear more from Jen on his blog. Meanwhile, a timeline of Jen's quick rise to fame via his blog about life at Google:

January 17: He posts about starting work at Google.
January 25: He gains attention after Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscope blogs about Jen's blog and some critical remarks about Google on it. The blog posts disappear soon after.
January 26: The blog returns, along with Jen's explanation of why he pulls some of his material down.
January 31: The blog gains attention again, after ads for it are spotted on Google.
February 8: News that Jen is no longer with Google emerges.

Postscript: Confirmation now that Jen was fired. More in Former Google Employee Mark Jen Was Fired For Blogging.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:53 PM | Permalink

February 3, 2005

More Google & Yahoo Employee Blogs

I posted earlier about a list of Google and Yahoo employee blogs. Here are two more spotted via Nathan at InsideGoogle, one for Google, one for Yahoo. And Microsoft employee blogs? Nathan notes blogs.msdn.com is the place for them.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:09 PM | Permalink

January 31, 2005

Google Employee Advertises Blog On Google?

Dirson has a screen shot of Google employee Mark Jen apparently advertising his blog on Google: Mark Jen Shows AdWords In Some Searches. Jen's blog received much attention after it disappeared for a few days after he made some critical remarks about his new employer.

Why advertise a blog that itself appears to generate no revenue? Conspiracy theory speculation is renewed again that this is some type of Google PR stunt, especially given that the text of the ad used the verboten word of Google in it. How could that happen, without Google's help, InsideGoogle wonders?

Well, Google definitely does prevent ads that use its name in ad copy from going through automatically, at least inintially. However, making use of the exception request, I got a copy of the ad in question up and running within a few seconds.

First, I copied everything in the original ad, submitted, and got this warning back from Google:

Due to trademark reasons, we do not allow advertisers to use 'google' in their Google AdWords ads. This term may be trademarked either for a certain product or service category and may apply only in certain countries.

However, I was also able to request an exception using links provided. I put nothing but the word "test" into the exception field, then submitted. This apparently sent my ad off to Google's editors for review. And despite being active, it didn't show. That made me think that the ad definitely wouldn't show until the review was finished.

Not so. I made a second ad, this time with the only difference being the initials SEW added to the title. This way, if it worked, it would be clear that I got the ad up. And voila, it went live:

So -- proof I could get an ad up with the word "google" in it and make it seem like it was done by Jen because I used his domain in the "display" URL. Had you clicked on it, you would have gone to Search Engine Watch.

In a further change, I then edited the ad to remove the SEW from the title, leaving me with an ad exactly like the one assumed to be from Jen:

The point of this is that anyone can make an ad for anything and point anywhere, at least for a short period of time until Google's editors review the ad -- a process that can take from hours to a few days. So seeing an ad isn't proof that anyone is advertising on anything.

Having said this, it could be Jen's ad. A comment at the InsideGoogle post notes that Google employees all get a limited delivery AdWords account. So perhaps he did decide it was worthwhile to drum up some publicity for the journal.

Meanwhile, Jen blogs onward, explaining that he works on the Google AdSense program as an associate product manager and thrilled that features can move out the door quickly. A feature advertisers have wanted for ages is the ability to pick and choose exactly what sites carry their AdSense ads. How about that feature getting out the door quickly! In another post, he also denies that his blog is a PR stunt.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:30 AM | Permalink

January 28, 2005

Google & Yahoo Employee Blogs

After all the furor over a Google employee's blog earlier this week, I started categories called "Employee Blogs" for Google, Yahoo and MSN in the Search Topics area we maintain for Search Engine Watch members. If you're a member, they're at Google: Employee Blogs, MSN: Employee Blogs and Yahoo: Employee Blogs).

Today, I came across this handy list from Google Answers where someone's provided a long rundown of what they've found so far. So looking for search employee blogs? Check out the list. And when someone launches Search Employees Blog Watch, I'll let you know. Question is -- who will it be first, Nick or Barry. Let the race begin.

Postcript: Philipp Lenssen over at Google Blogoscoped also compiles a list of weblogs by Google employees.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:19 AM | Permalink

January 26, 2005

Another Mozilla Developer Joins Google

If it wasn't there already, Google browser has now been kicked into overdrive.

The other day we blogged (as did may others) that Mozilla's lead engineer, Ben Goodger, was now on the Google payroll. In the last few hours, BetaNews is reporting that another Mozilla engineer is now part of the Google team. New Google employee, Darin Fisher, is is "in charge of cookies and permissions, as well as Mozilla's networking library." Fisher writes on his blog, "Like Ben, I will still be very much involved with the Mozilla project and community."

Posted by Gary Price at 9:19 PM | Permalink

Google Employee Blog Goes Back Up

Mark Jen, the Google employee whose blog content disappeared after he made some criticisms of the company, is back up and blogging again. In a new post, he explains that he had some stuff "that's not supposed to be there" and removed the entire blog as the "quickest way for me to fix the situation."

What stuff? Doing a quick comparison using Microsoft Word between what's up now and what was there, this is what was removed from a post on this day, the removed portions shown in bold:

they started off the day with a financials presentation, which was actually quite interesting. of course, i understand that they obviously will put a positive spin on everything, but the weight of the raw numbers is undeniable. both google's profits and revenue are growing at an unprecedented rate even while they are increasing their expenditures on capital and human resources. not to mention that google has been primarily focused on the u.s. market and is now turning their full attention to the global marketplace.

so after the interesting financials, the products team gave presentations reviewing product performance in 2004. and giving sneak peeks of the products we'll unveil in 2005. if you guys thought gmail and google groups were cool, you ain't seen nothing yet!

Google is just a few days from releasing its latest financial figures, and you can imagine that the company is understandably sensitive about anything coming out from it relating to earnings -- especially after a recent knuckle-rap from the SEC relating to issues with its IPO (see SEC Will Not Pursue Case Against Google) for more.

Add to that the fact that Jen also says in his explanation, "I'm learning that google is understandably careful about disclosing sensitive information, even vague financial-related things," and it sounds like it was suggested that this type of financial disclosure could potentially harm the company, so consider carefully what you release.

Jen specifically notes that he was not told to remove anything in particular, however. And Google tells me that he was not told or forced to remove anything from his blog. In fact, plenty of the critical remarks he made about the company remains.

So -- sounds like the blog removal all revolved around those comments on financial performance, and that he did decide to remove the material in retrospect.

One other entire post is also missing, his very first one, which you can still find on Bloglines. It's about his first day on the job and has nothing really financially-related at all. My guess is that he just hasn't gotten to putting it back up.

Finally -- what about the site going missing from Google itself? Well, we actually never knew if it was in Google in the first place. It seemed likely that it was, given that Yahoo also had it -- but that wasn't a guarantee. But now it's official. Google tells me it did not remove the site from the index.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:22 PM | Permalink

Google Employee Pulls Critical Blog Posts

"Life @ Google From The Inside" is the subtitle of new blog ninetyninezeros by Mark Jen, who says in the site he's a former Microsoft employee now working for Google. But the blog may already have died, after Google Blogoscope reported on a post with a couple of critical comments aimed at Jen's new employer:

Microsoft's health care benefits shame Google's relatively meager offering....

Google demands employees that are 90th percentile material, so what's with the 50th percentile compensation? The packages would've been decent when the company was pre-IPO, but let's be honest here... a stock option with a strike price of $188 just doesn't have the same value as the ones of yesteryear."

The posts are now gone, apparently pulled shortly after Google Blogoscope spotted the blog. Jen's past blog during his Microsoft time is here.

John Battelle notes that that the Google cached copy of the site is gone -- taken out manually by Google, he wonders? I agree, it's odd. It has been up long enough that you'd expect it to have been indexed. Instead, not a page at all from the site is showing as present.

Google does have an automated fast page removal service that authors can use. That could explain how the previous posts were taken out -- but it doesn't explain why the home page itself isn't being cached. Of course, neither MSN or Ask Jeeves show the blog -- but neither of them are as robust as Google in crawling, either.

Never fear, John spotted that Yahoo's not only indexed the page but makes it still available in cached form. Picking up some other comments from that:

i had a bunch of liquid capital in my checking account last time i checked, and now all of a sudden i have nothing....i realized the root problem was that google's relocation process requires the employee to pay all the expenses up front and then get reimbursed for them later....on the plus side, this first paycheck is going to be huge

the "benefits" package at google. as i thought about it, i realized that most of the "benefits" actually seem to be thinly veiled timesavers to keep you at work...if you think about the fact that the employee now probably only takes a half hour lunch break and also stays late working, the company actually realizes far more than an $8 gain in employee output. not to mention that most people think this is a great "benefit" and google gets a ton of positive press on it. in short, this "benefit" is designed benefit the company, not the employee.

despite these rants, i still chose to come to google. the work environment, projects and risk/reward equation were all more enticing than up in redmond. but just like when you look for apartments in SF, no option is ever perfect.

And an earlier post shares information that came out of a large Google sales conference that happened last week:

i understand that they obviously will put a positive spin on everything, but the weight of the raw numbers is undeniable. both google's profits and revenue are growing at an unprecedented rate even while they are increasing their expenditures on capital and human resources

the products team gave presentations reviewing product performance in 2004 and giving sneak peeks of the products we'll unveil in 2005. if you guys thought gmail and google groups were cool, you ain't seen nothing yet!

So what happened to the blog? I'll see if I can get an answer. It wouldn't surprise me if Jen's new employers expressed dissatisfaction with him venting through the blog. As for the missing pages, I suspect Jen probably asked Google for special help in getting them out of the index fast -- which they no doubt would have been happy to do.

Postscript: Bloglines reproduces all the posts that were on the original site here. Apparently, the blog sent out the full-text of posts in its feed, causing this to happen.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:39 AM | Permalink

January 24, 2005

Mozilla's Lead Engineer Now Being Paid By Google

Some very interesting news for those of you who like to talk about what Google is up to on the web browser front.

Ben Goodger, the lead engineer for Mozilla Firefox, posts on his blog that his new "source of income" is coming from Google. So, has Google hired Goodger to lead a browser development program? The answer is no. Goodger goes on to say that his work with "Firefox and the Mozilla project will remain largely unchanged" and that he "remain[s] devoted full-time to the advancement of Firefox, the Mozilla platform and web browsing in general." In other words, Google now has what you might call an "inside" interest in Mozilla since it's paying the salary of Mozilla's lead engineer.

Thanks to Google Blogoscoped for the tip.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:04 PM | Permalink

January 11, 2005

Problems Identifying Feed Links

Dave Winer posts today on the issue of finding a standard way to alert readers to the presence of a webfeed. Yeah, I agree -- what a pain that we have no standardization. I'm more amazed when I've gone to some prominent blogs that I simply cannot find their feeds anywhere. I end up going over to Yahoo, then doing a search because if it has found the feed address, it will list that below the page itself. Other times, there's just no consistency.

Here's a rundown of just a few of the blogs I read on a regular basis that show how it can be difficult to recognize when a feed is offered:

Anil Dash: In the middle of the page, you'll find the feed with this text: AtomEnabled (XML). Did you scroll to find it? Do you know Atom = feed?
Boing Boing: Nice. Right at the top, easy to spot, is this link: rss. Only downside? If you don't know RSS = feed, then you might miss out.
Dan Gillmor: I missed it initially, then finally spotted over in the right-hand column in small type: Syndicate this site (XML). Syndicate This Site? Sure, common wording for many blogs -- but bad wording. It's helpful only to those who understand that "syndicate" means I can take your feed and put it on my site. But a reader just wanting to read your feed? These words mean nothing -- especially to those who are new.
Jason Kottke: Nothing I spotted on the home page was immediately obvious as a feed link. Following through to the About page, skimming that showed nothing obvious as well. On the Archive page, you do get a mention within a paragraph of info. So the feed is a click from the home page and not immediately recognizable.
David Krane: Typical of what I find often with Blogger-based blogs, nothing obvious on the home page. I've looked and looked. Instead, to find the feed of this blog from one of Google's marketing chiefs, I had to go to rival search engine Yahoo, search for kraneland, then select the View as XML link that showed up under kraneland's listing. Thank you, Yahoo!

I grappled with what to do about highlighting feeds when we first started one for Search Engine Watch over a year ago. I went with using the little XML and RSS icons that I'd seen many other blogs use. Why both? To ensure even more recognition.

In addition, we now accompany them by a text link saying All Newsletters & Feeds in our left nav, which brings up a page showing all the feeds we offer. On the blog itself, there's also a separate listing for just the blog feed with both the icons and a Click For Blog Feed! link.

I certainly don't have the perfect solution. Like Dave, I simply wish there was some way that anyone with a feed could alert people that it is present. A standardized logo would help. I'd go with the word "Feed" as part of it to skip past the stupid RSS versus Atom debate. Since most feedreaders don't care the exact feed format, using the word Feed would be sufficient.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:35 AM | Permalink

November 1, 2004

Someone Else Grabbing My Blogspot Domain

Over the weekend we posted an item about David Krane, Director of Corporate PR, blogging at Kraneland.com.

A recent post on his site discusses how Yahoo erased about 200 messages that he stored on the Yahoo Mail servers cue to inactivity on his account.

Even Yahoo's own Jeremy Zawodny, agreed that this "royally sucks."

Jeremy's right, it does. And here's an example where inactivity on Google's own Blogger service produced a similar sucky situation.

I use blogger to publish my ResourceShelf blog. Originally, it used the blogger-provided resourceshelf.blogspot.com. After i registered the Resourceshelf.com domain, I kept both sites updated as mirrors of each other.

After a software upgrade, Blogger no longer allowed me to publish in both places nor provided any way for me to redirect the Resourceshelf.Blogspot.Com domain to my own site. Even worse, since I no longer was publishing to ResourceShelf.blogspot.com Blogger released that domain for use by others (and without checking with me first).

Visit that site now, and you'll find an SEO-oriented blog that now happily gains all the benefit of the nearly 2,000 links built up over time pointing at my OLD site. It may even be more, given that Google's link reporting tool notoriously doesn't show all the backlinks to a given domain.

That's also why you'll find the site third when doing a search on ResourceShelf. It's not, but all the historic links built up over time says that it is.

Ironically, Danny S. tells me that if this had been a domain name that was lapsed and picked up by someone else, Google would have detected the new registration and not let "old" links count to help make the "new" site relevant. But because we're dealing with a subdomain, there's no registration records to check.

Moral of the story? Always start with your own domain name, rather than a subdomain or subdirectory of someone else's. But it still would have been nice if Blogger had done a bit more to protect me.

Before we conclude this post, Danny just sent along the following note regarding David Krane's blog.

FYI, Google commenting about Yahoo Mail already gained attention by Steve Rubel. But not noticed was this site note. While Krane publishes using Blogger, he writes the blog out to his own web hosting service -- which apparently is Yahoo Website Services, http://website.yahoo.com/. You can see this by checking for a non-existing page on his blog -- it brings up a generic Yahoo error page, http://kraneland.com/dddd. Guess Google better get started on offering web hosting. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 18, 2004

A Groxis Update

Matt at the Merc reports about the latest goings on at info visualization tool Groxis in the article: Groxis moves up in the world. You'll read about the move to a new office along with recently "snagging" more than $12 million in venture cap funding.

I used Groxis for several weeks year and didn't find it all that useful but that could just be me and the way I search. Several people have told me that they love the product. I think I'm going to take another look.

If you would like to check some other info visualization tools available on the web, here's a list of a few tools that are available: + Hoover's via anacubis Visualize some of the business data that Hoover's makes available for free.

You can also use anacubis to visualize Amazon and Google.

+ SmartMoney's Map of the Market A very cool and useful way of looking at stock market data. Access to some maps is free while others are fee-based.

+ Amazon, Google, and LiveJournal visualization tools from TouchGraph

+ Google News Map (Note: Osinga works for Google's engineering team, and this is part of his blog)

+ Client software: Personal Brain

Posted by Gary Price at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 12, 2004

Jeremy Zawodny: Yahoo Search Blogvangelist

Jeremy Zawodny is a Yahoo employee who once worked on the search side and now returns to it, as he explains more here: New Job (Again).

Search is also one of the things Jeremy has touched on in his personal blog, with some of the best reading dings at Google and even his own employer, at times.

That blog, he notes in explaining his new position, has had much to do with his move into the new role of improving search products, communication about search, gathering feedback and recruiting people.

What I find most significant is that the move positions him as the first notable blogvangelist employed by a major search company.

Sure, Google has its own blog, launched in May. Yahoo has one as well, launched in August. It's more active than Google's, completely focused on search and frankly often times more interesting. But both remain corporate blogs. They don't reflect the unfiltered views of an individual.

Microsoft has had this type of blogger personality in the form of Robert Scoble. He's someone who works from Microsoft, is vocal about things there but doesn't necessarily follow the party line. He was also instrumental in pulling together Microsoft's recent Search Champs initiative.

As a long reader of Jeremy's blog, he's always been that way as well -- a personality who speaks his mind, regardless of what his employer may think. With his new role in search, we ought to hear more interesting firsthand accounts of someone on the frontline of the search wars.

Meanwhile, will Google and others feel compelled to find their own search personalities to speak to the blogosphere? Google actually has the longest standing unofficial spokesperson around, in the form of GoogleGuy. However, GoogleGuy has to date only participated in the forumsphere.

Search forums have been a key public relations front for all the search engines, given how search marketers will dissect any move and report on the latest findings through them. Now blogs seem to be opening up as a new PR front to compete in.

A recent Google Blog entry did see GoogleGuy edge into the blog world for the first time. However, he remains anonymous. Lifting the lid on his identity (an open secret among many involved in search marketing) might give Google a search personality of its own.

Postscript: Jeremy provides more thoughts and reactions into his new role: Honesty and Blogvangelism

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 20, 2004

Google On Hiring Spree For Nooglers?

Google Picks Gates' Brains from the New York Post talks about Google being on a hiring spree. It's unclear to me whether this is really a spree. I imagine that picking up half-a-dozen people over a couple weeks is probably business as usual, for Google.

It IS interesting to read that four people formerly working on Microsoft's Internet Explorer have recently been hired by Google, though they'd left Microsoft by the time they were hired. That will further fuel the idea that Google will launch its own browser, which has been explored recently on blogs and voiced in the past, as with Andrew Goodman at the end of last year. (We also have some forum discussion here: How About a Google Web Browser?).

Also interesting is news that someone who is a direct steal from Microsoft by Google, Joe Beda, is keeping a web log that documents his experiences as a Noogler -- a new Google employee. Adam Bosworth is also a Noogler, part of that team of four browser developers now at Google. You'll find his blog here and more about his hire here: Bosworth Leaves BEA for Google.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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