Hey folks, I hope you’re doing well, and wanted to catch you up to speed on some new life happenings. Namely: babies. Two of them at once. Lindsay and I welcomed healthy fraternal twin boys into the world a few months ago. So far, Twin A is big, open, loud and easygoing with his smiles. […]
Matt Cutts
https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ · 110 posts · history since 2012 · active
31 Aug 2023
4 Aug 2021
I wanted to write a bit about my partner Lindsay Aranoff and why I’m so grateful we found each other. I could talk about the stuff you could discover from the internet (inaugural Global Shaper with the World Economic Forum, curator of a TEDxKids event in Canada, co-founder of a company with the CTO of […]
21 Oct 2019
Fitbit has discontinued their Fitbit One step trackers, which seems like a good opportunity to step back and reflect on wearing one for the last decade or so. I’ve enjoyed using Fitbit trackers, but the One devices seemed like they broke down too often. I’m pretty proud that I ended up earning all the activity-related […]
4 Nov 2018
Do you need something to cheer you up? You got it: I should explain this costume a little bit. At the US Digital Service, we do a thing called “crab claws.” Crab claws is like visual applause–you pinch your fingers up and down to say “great job” or “congratulations” or “way to go.” We do […]
8 Mar 2018
Cindy Cutts, my wife and best friend, passed away earlier this week. While I was traveling for work recently, Cindy went to visit her family in Omaha, Nebraska. On Sunday, while enjoying time with family, Cindy started having trouble breathing. Her family quickly called 911 and paramedics took Cindy to the hospital, but Cindy lost […]
22 Jan 2018
Last week, I passed my one year anniversary as head of the US Digital Service (USDS). So when Mr. Money Mustache asked for an interview, I was delighted to talk about some of the work that the USDS does. If you aren’t familiar with Mr. Money Mustache, he writes about a philosophy of badassity in […]
19 Jan 2017
A few months ago, I took a leave of absence from Google to do a stint with the US Digital Service. A lot of people know about the US Digital Service because they helped rescue the healthcare.gov website. But you might not realize that the US Digital Service has helped veterans get their health benefits, […]
18 Jun 2016
Over the last couple years, I’ve seen more and more people in technology trying to make government work better. They’re idealists who are also making a large impact. These are people that I respect–some of them worked to fix healthcare.gov, for example. From talking to many of them, I can tell you that their energy […]
3 Feb 2016
Amit Singhal just announced that he’s retiring toward the end of the month. Amit has been a formative part of Google’s search team, but he’s also a good friend. Last year, after he marked 15 years with Google, I wrote this about Amit’s contributions: Amit Singhal, one of the unsung heroes of Google, just celebrated […]
19 Jan 2016
I solved a problem today and figured that I’d document it for the rest of the world. Every time someone left me a voicemail on Verizon, I would get a cryptic text from Verizon at 900080006202 that looked like “//VZWVVM:SYNC:ev=NM;id=1;c=1;t=v;s=1XXXXXXXXXX;dt=18/01/2016 13:40-0900;l=13;dev_t=5” or “//VZWVVM:SYNC:ev=MBU;dev_t=5”. Here’s what happened. It turns out that Verizon has three kinds of […]
31 Oct 2015
I went a little overboard for Halloween last year. And as you can tell from my the Halloween category on my blog, sometimes I get a little too excited about Halloween. So this year I decided to go quick, easy, and lo-fi as a USB drive: To make a thumb drive/USB key, I just took […]
24 Sept 2015
Recently I’ve seen several interesting conversations about ad blocking, and I wanted to remind people about a great offering called Google Contributor. With Google Contributor, you contribute a certain amount of money each month. That subscription means that you see fewer ads on the web, and you support the sites that you visit with your […]
9 Apr 2015
My taste in financial advice runs toward the simple and the lessons I’ve learned the hard way. But I still like reading about investing/finance, and I recently read through the 2014 annual report for Berkshire Hathaway. Given that it was the 50th anniversary of Warren Buffett taking charge of Berkshire, I have to admit that […]
1 Apr 2015
This was an April Fool’s joke. I’ve been working really hard with some friends on a project to handle SEO automatically. Now we’re ready to take the wraps off it over at seo.ninja. One of the ideas that helped the World Wide Web succeed was that it separated presentation and content. You could write your […]
1 Mar 2015
For January 2015, I tried to declutter around the house for 15 minutes a day. We now have a couple rooms that are much cleaner, and I gave away a bunch of magazines. For February 2015, my 30 day challenge was to go on daily 15 minute walks with my wife. That was nice. Lately […]
19 Feb 2015
Whether you’re running a web service or a blog, you should always keep your software fully patched to prevent attacks and minimize your attack surface. Another smart step is to prevent full path disclosures. For example, if your blog or service throws an error like “Warning: require(ABSPATHwp-includes/load.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No such file […]
23 Jan 2015
Earlier this month I did a talk at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill about lessons learned from the early days of Google. The video is now online and watchable, or you can watch it on YouTube: We did the talk in a pretty large room, and the camera at the back of […]
2 Jan 2015
I’d like to mention two books that stood out for me in 2014: Nonfiction: The First 20 Minutes. Gretchen Reynolds is a New York Times columnist who distills health and exercise research down to practical, readable advice. I’ve never dog-eared as many pages in a book as The First 20 Minutes. Reynolds writes about why […]
14 Dec 2014
A few months ago I saw a cool mosaic effect in a Wired ad for CA Technologies. Here’s what part of the ad looked like: I liked the ad, so I wondered how they did it. Can you see out how to create a similar effect? Take a minute to figure it out as an […]
1 Dec 2014
If you’ve read Scott Adams’ financial advice and my financial tips in case you win a startup lottery, then you might be interested in a few more pointers to good resources. Some web pages and books: – Don’t Play the Losers’ Game, by Henry Blodget. This is a short, accessible piece that explains why picking […]
I’ve been spending more time surfing the web on my laptop than I’d like to. I’ve also noticed more emails that lure me into short tasks, but eventually eat up a large chunk of my day. I’d prefer to be spending more time working on projects, reading, and unplugging. So my new 30 day challenge […]
So how did I do on my 30 day writing challenge? Well, the picture tells the story: Not too bad! I did miss one day, but here’s a secret about 30 day challenges: if you miss a day or two, you can just keep doing the challenge for another day or so at the end. […]
30 Nov 2014
Working in webspam, we sometimes use the phrase “buy Viagra online” as an example of a search query that might be spammy. That’s why I noticed and remembered the 2013 announcement that you can officially buy Viagra online. As this Time article points out, you’ve actually been able to buy Viagra online through legitimate pharmacy […]
Because not every blog post has to be serious: Special thanks to my friend Amy who crocheted this masterpiece! Amy also works with an awesome group of volunteers that crochets dolls for kids fighting cancer and other illnesses.
29 Nov 2014
Any time you talk about money, you risk sounding like a jerk. I’m going to take that risk in this post. I’ll start out by talking about a couple ways I shot myself in the foot financially and what I learned as a result. Your mileage may vary. Before we start, you might want to […]
28 Nov 2014
I’m thankful for family and friends and good health and so many wonderful people I’ve had the pleasure of working with at Google. But I’m also thankful for airplanes: “You want to see your family? It would take months to walk to them, but come sit in this metal tube and thanks to some interesting […]
27 Nov 2014
I’m looking at this list of federal holidays, and you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking fuck Columbus Day. Who the hell cares about Columbus Day except for mattress stores? Instead, let’s scratch Columbus Day and make Election Day a national holiday. Turnout on Election Day was only 36.6 percent in 2014, according to Senator […]
26 Nov 2014
Google has a pretty good culture of doing postmortems. When something fails, someone close to the failure tries to document what happened and why. A good postmortem document should also point the way to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Mistakes happen, but you don’t want to make the same mistakes over and over again. […]
25 Nov 2014
I had one more experience at the XOXO Festival that I wanted to mention. I really enjoyed Anita Sarkeesian’s talk. You can watch it here: Sarkeesian explained her experience with humor and grace, and that really resonated with me. I don’t want to join the tone police–passionate voices have a role in this discussion too, […]
24 Nov 2014
Open source is really good at creating products. Almost any commercial software package or product like Word, Excel, Windows, or Photoshop has a great open source equivalent. However, open source has been less successful at creating services. Where’s the open source version of Google, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Gmail, or Craigslist? You could sum […]
23 Nov 2014
If you’re a geek like me, there’s probably a bank or cluster of micro USB chargers somewhere in your house for recharging phones, tablets, Kindles, headphones, etc. Lately I’ve been playing with a couple USB chargers that I really like. One is a USB charger with 3.5 amp (!) output. Just for context, a typical […]
22 Nov 2014
Every year or so, it’s worthwhile doing an audit of your online security. The most important accounts to protect are your bank accounts and your email accounts. Here are some things to consider doing: – Choose strong passwords. Just as important: don’t re-use the same password across web services. Consider using a password manager like […]
21 Nov 2014
When I was in grad school in the late 90s, not very much scholarly work was on the web. I had to walk over to the campus library to access scholarly papers, and sometimes make photocopies of the physical papers I wanted. Things have gotten better, but it’s still harder to do research than it […]
20 Nov 2014
The week before XOXO, a festival dedicated to independent artists and creators, I was in Juneau, Alaska for a cruise with my wife and my parents. I got off the ship with my Dad and we walked around town. We kept walking, past the touristy stores selling smoked salmon and tanzanite. We walked for a […]
19 Nov 2014
The state of Kentucky has 120 counties. It has so many because the idea was that you should be able to make it to the county seat and back in a single day. That speaks to how isolated people used to be. Likewise, the Galapagos Islands are known for their diversity, in part because the […]
18 Nov 2014
This weekend I swapped comic book recommendations with a few folks. Today I was emailing someone a few of my favorites and thought “I should just put this up on the blog.” So to call out a few comics I’ve enjoyed: – Sandman – the classic Neil Gaiman books that make it “okay” to be a […]
17 Nov 2014
Imagine that you’re training for the San Francisco Marathon. You’d like to prepare for the distinctive pattern of hills on the course: Now if you live in San Francisco, you could just run along the actual race course. But what if you don’t live near San Francisco? Wouldn’t it be cool if a service could […]
15 Nov 2014
Here’s something that I wrote internally within Google in mid-2013. I think at the time, folks within Google were discussing XMPP. The discussion wasn’t as much about client-to-server XMPP, but server-to-server XMPP, which is a less followed area. Anyway, here’s the internal post I wrote: We want to compete on a level playing field We’ve […]
14 Nov 2014
I recently had a web page with a long list of Twitter names that were not linked, like @mattcutts. I thought that someone has to have made a Chrome extension that would “linkify” names so they would be clickable like @mattcutts. And with a little bit of searching, I found twlinkfy. It looked like a […]
13 Nov 2014
One trick that I’ve discovered pretty recently for my 30 day challenges is based on advice from Jerry Seinfeld. The idea is that you get yourself a cheap calendar and a red pen. Every day you complete your daily challenge, you can cross that day off with a satisfying swipe of the red pen. Once […]
History is an angel being blown backwards into the future. History is a pile of debris, and the angel wants to go back and fix things, to repair things that have been broken. But there is a storm blowing from Paradise, and this storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future. And this storm […]
11 Nov 2014
If you had to pick the top four cities that matter the most in the U.S. based on the industry that they represent, which cities would you pick? I’d argue for these four: – New York City: money/finance/Wall Street – Los Angeles: culture, such as TV and movies – Silicon Valley (taking San Jose up […]
Googlers love to discuss and debate things within the company. As a rule of thumb, the internal discussion is civil and respectful, but can be passionate. I may take a few of my favorite internal posts that I wrote, tweak them a bit, and publish them here just so I can refer to them more […]
10 Nov 2014
You have many choices about where to put your data (email, docs, calendar, contacts): Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, open source/self-hosting, etc. One big consideration for me is how hard it is to export my data. In essence, I’m looking for the exits before I even sit down in any company’s virtual room. For […]
9 Nov 2014
On balance, I’m already a Charlie Huston fan. My previous favorite book by Huston is Already Dead, which is a hard-boiled noir novel about vampires in the New York underground. I didn’t care for the rest of the trilogy quite as much, but Huston is high on the list of authors I enjoy. I’m not […]
8 Nov 2014
A few years ago I read some short financial advice by Scott Adams, the author and creator of the Dilbert cartoon. It’s great advice–it’s perfect for 95% of Americans’ finances and investing. Without further ado, here is Dilbert’s One Page Personal Finance List: Make a will. Pay off your credit card balance. Get term life […]
7 Nov 2014
Before 2011, I had never run farther than eight miles. Then I found a program called USA FIT which helps runners across the country train up and run a marathon. My goal was to run one marathon and then stop, but I found some friendly folks and so I just kept running. It’s been wonderful. […]
6 Nov 2014
Hey Active.com, I know that a lot of races rely on you for registration. And you do some things really well, like handling the spike of traffic when a race opens up for registration. But you do some stuff really badly. Here’s some feedback about things you could do better. Negative Option Billing? I always […]
4 Nov 2014
Moving from Halloween to running, I wanted to blog about what it’s like to “bonk” or hit the wall while running a marathon. I’m a slow runner. Hell, I’m a slow walker. I consider it a great marathon if I finish in just under five hours. This past weekend at the Morgan Hill marathon, I […]
3 Nov 2014
Okay, so you can project light onto a canvas to easily try out an idea. I decided to try one more Halloween costume: Edvard Munch’s The Scream. I started by finding a high-resolution version of The Scream. Next I projected the painting onto a canvas: Then I took a pencil and traced the strokes of […]
I already talked about using a projector to prototype a Halloween costume. One Halloween idea that worked out better than I expected was Jack Nicholson from The Shining. Remember the scene when Jack axes his way through a door, announcing “Here’s Johnny!”? It looked like this in the movie: I started by letting some stubble […]
1 Nov 2014
For Halloween this year I was thinking about famous works of art like Rene Magritte’s Son of Man or more popular works like the “Hang in There, Baby!” kitten. I was also thinking about canvases. You can buy a cheap canvas at local craft stores for $10 or so. I was thinking: wouldn’t it be […]
31 Oct 2014
In the past for Halloween, I’ve often dressed up as internet memes (Rick Astley, anyone?) or topical things from the news (like Matt/Mitt Romney). This year I was running dry on ideas until a few days before Halloween. Then I started to think about famous artwork–more on that in a future Halloween post. One idea […]
30 Oct 2014
For October 2014, my 30 day challenge was to write a compliment a day for my wife. I liked that challenge because it was a good chance to be thankful for my wife after 15 years of marriage. It’s all too easy to settle into a routine and take things (or people) for granted. For […]
14 Sept 2014
I haven’t really written about what it was like to run the Boston Marathon, but I wanted to share one story with you about a woman named Darby Stott. I’m a slow runner (our running group in San Jose likes to call ourselves “a social group with a running problem”). So to make it to […]
3 Jul 2014
I wanted to let folks know that I’m about to take a few months of leave. When I joined Google, my wife and I agreed that I would work for 4-5 years, and then she’d get to see more of me. I talked about this as recently as last month and as early as 2006. […]
9 Jun 2014
Hey everybody, I’m looking for some fun books (mostly fiction) to read this summer. What would you recommend? One book I recently enjoyed was The Martian, a novel about an astronaut stranded on Mars who needs to figure out how to survive and get home with minimal supplies. It was a little heavy on the […]
2 Jun 2014
Okay, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Let me tell you about the 30 day challenges I’ve been doing and what I learned: – March 2014: I went back to doing no external email, and I learned this one weird, simple trick that helped. In previous “no email” challenges, I relied on sheer force […]
26 Feb 2014
In January 2014, my 30 day challenge was to limit my social media. That was a productive month. In February 2014, my 30 day challenge was to eat more slowly. I did that by counting to ten between chewing bites of my food. I tend to wolf down my food, which doesn’t give my stomach […]
20 Jan 2014
Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company. Back in the day, guest […]
28 Dec 2013
Today I made a Bluetooth garage door opener. Now I can open my garage from my Android phone. There’s a short how-to YouTube video from Lou Prado. Lou also made a website btmate.com that has more information, and you can watch an earlier howto video as well. The project itself was pretty simple: – Acquire […]
16 Dec 2013
I’ll keep it short: this week when you donate for cancer research, I’ll match your donation (up to a limit of $5000 total for all donations). We’ve already raised almost $8,000 dollars to help stop cancer, but I’d love to get to $10,000 or even higher. If anyone has ever wanted to take money out […]
2 Dec 2013
I like to set myself different challenges every 30 days. In October 2013, I tried to eat better and exercise more. I did alright on that, but without a specific daily goal, I had a hard time deciding how well I did. I mostly got back into the habit of exercising daily, so that was […]
21 Nov 2013
A few years ago, I asked on my blog what people would like from Google’s free webmaster tools. It’s pretty cool to re-read that post now, because we’ve delivered on a lot of peoples’ requests. At this point, our webmaster console will alert you to manual webspam actions that will directly affect your site. We’ve […]
20 Nov 2013
For the folks that don’t know, I’ve been out for a couple weeks and I’ll be on vacation the rest of November. If you’ve tried to contact me recently and haven’t heard back, that’s probably the reason. Added: if you enjoy watching our webmaster videos, you can follow @googlewmc to hear as soon as we […]
4 Nov 2013
On April 21st, 2014, I’m going to run the Boston Marathon. If you want to show your support, please donate to a good cause for cancer research. Anyone who wants to give is welcome. 🙂 So many people have been affected by cancer, including members of my own family. The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute funds basic […]
31 Oct 2013
For Halloween 2013 I decided to be the Dread Pirate Roberts from the movie The Princess Bride: I even grew a slight moustache to help make the character believable: But to be clear, I wasn’t just any old Dread Pirate Roberts. I decided to be the Silk Road Dread Pirate Roberts. So if you want […]
26 Sept 2013
Someone recently asked me how I manage my to-do list, so I thought I’d write up the software that I use. Fundamentally I use Google Tasks as the backend, but with extensions and apps that improve on the basic functionality in Google Tasks. Chrome I use a couple different extensions for Chrome: – Better Google […]
3 Sept 2013
Some relatives were visiting this past week, so my inbox has a triple digit backlog. That’s after aggressive pruning of mailing lists and so on. Nearly all of those emails mention me in a “to:” or “cc:” line and request a response. Some observations: – roughly 40% of those emails are from the outside world […]
21 Aug 2013
A couple friends have recently had security scares with their Gmail account where they were worried that their accounts might have been hacked. I was emailing one of them about how to make sure that your account is safe, and I realized it might be handy to post this on my blog as well. Here’s […]
2 Aug 2013
For June 2013, my 30 day challenge was to record a second of video every day. I was inspired by Cesar Kuriyama’s wonderful TED talk about how he records a second of video every day. There’s a couple things Cesar said in his talk that really resonated with me: – “[A]s the days and weeks […]
23 Jul 2013
For May 2013 I decided to try making a Chromebook Pixel my primary laptop. So how did it go? Well, the short version is that I’m still a happy Pixel user, almost three months after my one month challenge started. Previously, I was using a Thinkpad 420s running Goobuntu. In fact, I’ve been using Thinkpads […]
17 Jul 2013
I realized that I didn’t mention this widely: my current 30 day challenge (July 2013) is not to read any news or social media. So no Twitter, Google News, Techmeme, Google+, Hacker News, Reddit, Imgur, etc. So if you’re wondering why I haven’t replied to a question, that’s the reason. I might still share a […]
1 Jul 2013
Back in the 90s, the heart of a computer was the CPU. The faster the CPU, the better the computer was–you could do more, and the speed of the CPU directly affected your productivity. People upgraded their computers or bought new ones whenever they could to take advantage of faster CPU speeds. I remember the […]
18 Jun 2013
Folks at Google get cold-call emails out of the blue just like everybody else. Here’s an email that a colleague of mine got recently: I was on your website www.google.com and wanted to shoot you a quick note. I think I can make a few changes (aesthetically and/or SEO – wise) to make your site […]
23 May 2013
We started rolling out the next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm this afternoon (May 22, 2013), and the rollout is now complete. About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice. The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies […]
13 May 2013
We just recently taped a new round of webmaster videos, and I thought this video deserved a full-fledged blog post. This is my rough estimate (as of early May 2013) of what search engine optimizers (SEOs) and webmasters should expect in the next few months: Bear in mind that this is a very rough estimate, […]
This is a “hairball” post you can ignore. However, this post does trace my thinking about how to scale webmaster communication. Part of me wants to start answering questions I get via email by stripping out the identifying information and then replying with a blog post. Instead of one person getting a single reply, everybody […]
A quick “hairball” post about how sometimes it’s better to just go with the flow. I like how xkcd made this point with a chart of whether it’s worth the time to fix something that’s bugging you. I have a friend who is mechanical engineer. A few years ago he took me for a tour […]
This is a harmless “hairball” post I had as a draft. Me: Hey, they added me to popurls.com! My wife: Never heard of it. (pause) Had you heard of it before? Me: Yeah. Wife: Really? Me: Yeah! Wife: (with an extra helping of sarcasm) Really? Me: Yes! Wife: (dripping with condescension) You’re a very important […]
This is the last half-finished “hairball” blog post about USB devices on Linux. I actually did manage to get a working program that controlled a USB foam missile launcher. Unfortunately, I didn’t document all the steps, so this blog post just sort of stops at some point. I got a USB Missile Launcher for Christmas. […]
What, *another* half-finished blog post about Linux USB drivers? Yup. Suppose you have a device and want a Linux device driver for it. There are a few steps you’ll need to take. One of the heroes in this area is Greg Kroah-Hartman. Greg wrote USBView, which is a Linux tool to enumerate a list of […]
Here’s another “hairball” post about USB devices and drivers on Linux. I wish some expert would write the definitive “here’s how to reverse-engineer a USB device and write a new USB driver” guide. I am definitely not that expert. Once you reverse engineer a Windows USB device enough to know how it works, you’re ready […]
For a while, I was really into reverse-engineering USB drivers. Don’t ask why. The heart wants what the heart wants. I didn’t finish this “hairball” post, but it has some info in it that still might be good. I recently stumbled across this post and it inspired me. I decided to try to reverse engineer […]
Over the years I’ve written a lot of blog posts to debunk misconceptions or claims that weren’t true. Sometimes I publish the blogs posts but often I don’t. This is a pretty typical example post. Someone claimed that Google was evil for removing a particular domain, when in fact the domain had been removed from […]
I started this blog post of Chrome tips in 2008. Even though this is a “hairball” post, some of these tips still work. – control-shift-V will paste your selection as plain text – control-shift-T will re-open the last tab you closed. You can repeat that to keep re-opening previously closed tabs. – Hover over a […]
This “hairball” post about Cuil isn’t really snarky, so I’ll post it. Cuil is no longer around, but it did spawn a funny post on Reddit about Cuil Theory. Cuil launched this week. For a search engineer, a new search engine is like a Christmas present: you can’t wait to play with it. Most search […]
You can ignore this ancient “hairball” blog post. Gather round, kids, and witness this blog post from a time *before internet-connected scales*. That’s right. Back then, we had to hack our Wii balance boards to connect them to the internet. Of course now you can buy wifi-connected scales from Fitbit and Withings. But in a […]
You can ignore this “hairball” blog post. This post dates back to a time when people actually curated, saved, and managed their bookmarks.html file. Then Google Chrome introduced the ability to save and sync all your bookmarks, extensions, etc. in the cloud. Now I sign in to Chrome and everything is synced in the cloud. […]
What’s that? You’ve never heard of an XMPCR? Don’t worry, the rest of the world hasn’t either. You can ignore this “hairball” post as I do spring cleaning on my blog. TimeTrax was a program that allowed XMPCR owners to listen to XM Radio on their computer. Even nicer, the program would “time shift” the […]
Note: this is a “hairball” post and you can ignore it. I was so proud of my first one million steps with a pre-Fitbit pedometer. Now I’ve done 13 million steps and it’s just kind of normal. For the record, the Fitbit is a great little pedometer, but I tend to lose one every few […]
This “hairball” post is ancient and unfinished. Would anyone care about this now? Probably not. Maybe some future data archaeologist will care. In my previous post I covered what a toolchain is and why you need one to cross-compile applications for the iPhone. I’ve seen rumors that there will be a Windows toolchain soon, and […]
My blog is almost eight years old, and I’ve published just under a thousand blog posts in that time. Along the way, I wrote about 100 draft notes that I never published. Sometimes I just didn’t finish the posts. Sometimes I thought they were too boring. Sometimes I wrote a blog post to debunk a […]
3 May 2013
Recently someone on twitter complained that Chrome was labeling their site as malware: http://Dvorak.org site blocked by Chrome browser after I wrote negative commentary about Google. I took a few minutes to compose a reply, so I’ll go ahead and post it here: Just to summarize: Chrome’s warning is correct. Your blog is hacked and […]
1 Apr 2013
You may have heard of my 30 day challenges, where I try something new for 30 days. Those challenges are great to try out a new habit and see how you like it. But I’m also a big believer in picking out really big goals too. In 2010 I trained for a few months so […]
1 Feb 2013
Hey folks, I just finished January’s 30 day challenge: no news, no Twitter, fewer emails, and no social media in general. For February, my wife and I are trying a gluten-free, wheat-free month to see what that’s like. Okay, so how was January? I started with a week completely off the internet, which coincided with […]
30 Dec 2012
The end of the year is a perfect time to think about goals. Did you get done what you wanted in 2012? What do you want to accomplish in 2013? Instead of setting year-long goals, I’m a big fan of trying out new things for a month at a time: This month I’m going to […]
17 Nov 2012
I spoke at PubCon 2012 last month in Las Vegas. A couple people have asked for my slides, so here they are: Several of the slides have links to additional information, in case you’re interested. We announced the disavow links tool during my session so that’s what a lot of the slides are about.
1 Nov 2012
For October 2012, I tried to practice the ukulele every day. I ended up doing more traveling than I expected, but I managed to play ukulele most of the days. I’m still a total beginner, but it was a lot of fun! My favorite song to play so far is M.T.A. by the Kingston Trio. […]
31 Oct 2012
My fellow Americans, I’d like to introduce my latest Halloween costume: Matt Romney! My five-point plan for the Mitt Romney Halloween costume went like this: Start with a suit and tie. Put a little silver in my sideburns. My wife used some silver and white eye shadow. Swoosh the hair up a little bit and […]
11 Oct 2012
My grandfather has been seriously ill this week, so I’m flying tonight to be with him in Tennessee. If you’re waiting on me for a reply about something, it will probably need to wait. I still hope to attend PubCon next week but I can’t promise that I’ll be able to make it. Added: My […]
1 Oct 2012
Last month I did a secret 30 day challenge: everyday I did something nice for my wife. It could be surprising her with flowers, doing some chore around the house without her asking, or just trying to be present and focused when she wanted to talk. This challenge turned out really well. At first, I […]
7 Sept 2012
I’m planning to record some new webmaster questions next week. I made a Google Moderator page where you can submit topics and vote for different questions. Please ask your questions in on the Google Moderator page, not in the comments here. When the comments are in Moderator, people can vote them up and down.
28 Aug 2012
Recently a newspaper contacted me. Their PageRank had dropped from 7 to 3, and they wanted to know why. They genuinely didn’t seem know what the issue was, so I took some time to write them an in-depth reply. Part of the motivation for my blog is to provide information in more scalable ways, so […]
7 Aug 2012
You should read Mat Honan’s heartbreaking tale of a hack attack and the ensuing discussion on Techmeme. Much of the story is about Amazon or Apple’s security practices, but I would still advise everyone to turn on Google’s two-factor authentication to make your Gmail account safer and less likely to get hacked. Two-factor authentication means […]
2 Aug 2012
One of the most tenacious blackhat webspam techniques we continue to see is hacked sites. I wanted to remind site owners that our free “Fetch as Google” tool can be a really helpful way to see whether you’ve successfully cleaned up a hacked site. For example, recently a well-known musician’s website was hacked. The management […]
3 Jul 2012
Last month (June 2012), my 30 day challenge was to try to eat mindfully (eat more slowly, don’t eat while distracted by TV or web browsing, chew more, stop eating when I’m full, etc.). It turns out that eating mindfully is hard. I’m the sort of person that eats whatever is on my plate, so […]
27 Apr 2012
Beyond clear-cut blackhat webspam, the second-biggest category of spam that Google deals with is hacked sites. The most common reaction we hear from webmasters is “The problem is with the Google search. There is nothing wrong with our website.” That’s a real quote from an email one site owner recently sent us. Sadly, it turns […]
15 Mar 2012
I haven’t given an update on my 30 day challenges in, like, forever. So here goes: – In 2011, I paused my 30 day challenges to do a “six month challenge”: training to run a marathon. I ended up running the San Francisco marathon (while tweeting!) and a couple half-marathons. Pro tip: ramp up slowly […]
5 Mar 2012
Updated: Okay, there’s a new plan. My wife is having surgery to put a screw in her foot, and the operation is two days before my panel. I really can’t leave her to come to SXSW. We’re going to try for me to Skype in to the panel instead. Cross your fingers. Every so often […]