Since Matt Cutts was a speaker at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco in April, his ten minute video presentation has been making the rounds. A ’spam expert’ who has been with Google for eight years, Matt is something of an authority on the subject.
I watched the video five times, and on the fifth round I decided that although all the information was relevant, the part that really grabbed my attention was the next to last thing he brought up (watch the video here).
As a newbie to the web, and bombarded with tips for domain registration, keywords and SEO tactics, I live in constant fear of doing something wrong. I am known to burn the midnight oil poring over Google’s many pages of rules and regulations concerning spam and SEO practices; what I can do, what I can’t do, what I can do as long as it is within reason, what I should avoid because, even if it’s not a direct violation, it looks suspicious.
I spend hours on forums and discussion boards, reading and re-reading the trials and tribulations of other would-be Webmasters like myself, who bewail the fact that the rug has been jerked from beneath them and honestly seem to have no idea what they did to incur such penalties.
Wouldn’t it be nice for all us novices to the internet game if we got a warning before being penalized for a foul?
Cutts said we could. I almost missed it, but the very last slide he showed has the webmaster address for registering your site with Google. Supposedly, if they see white on white text, if it appears that your site has been hacked or they see any other problem with your site, they will ‘drop you a line’ to give you a chance to fix the problem.
Whew! With the controversy surrounding penalties, bans and other adverse actions, at least I don’t have to worry about being taken down because of outside interference. Of course, I promptly clicked on over to check this out.
The Google Webmaster offers a bunch of other cool options as well. You can see your back links, the words people are inputting in their searches that are bringing up your page, and even the load time of your site (important because of its new calculation value to your Quality Score).
It looks like I have some more late night reading to do to acquaint my self with all of Google cool new tools, but at least I can rest easy, knowing someone is keeping an eye out. I hear lots of complaints about Google’s ‘spam team’, but for me? As long as I keep my own nose clean I will have nothing to fear, and if they can help keep others from sneezing all over me, I’ll be grateful!