Almost everyone in the industry who's had a chance to interact one on one with a Googler in the past 6 months has probably noticed that it "feels" different from the interactions of the past 3 years. Robert Scoble did a good job describing it with regard to his recent visit to the 'plex:
...every interaction I had with Googlers this time was different than the last time I was on campus. They seemed more humble. More comfortable. More inquisitive. And, when I gave them chances to say “you’re an idiot” they didn’t take it (and I gave them many opportunities). This is a different Google than I was used to. And it’s the small things that I noticed.
One other small thing I noticed? A lot more blog listening behavior. Carl Sjogreen, who runs the Google Calendar team, told me that the first thing he does every morning is do this search: “Google Calendar.” He says he answers everyone’s questions, even if you’re a kid in another country with only four readers.
There's a lot of other very good examples of this shift in behavior, including:
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Vanessa Fox & the Webmaster Central team's blog
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Googlers (who aren't Matt) interacting after hours with SEOs
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The hiring of Adam Lasnik
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Googlers reading and participating in blogs and forums
Personally, I'm thrilled to see this change. I honestly did not expect that they'd go down this path until they were faced with a loss or failure. Google's communication structure has gone from hubris to relative humility in a remarkably short period of time.
Do you get the same sense? What have been your experiences with Google of late?
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But seriously, this confidence could show that they have made it to a new level, ever wonder why Matt never gets pissed off at spammers and simply reasons with them?
Does that imply loss or failure? Interesting use of words Rand. ;)
One more: When you have more money than you can imagine you either become a wack job or work to improve the human condition, let's hope that Google is writing an internal rule book to keep themselves honest.
I actually think that Google is doing a great job of Public Relations in the Webmaster/SEO space. When I started learning SEO, there was no matt cutts blog explaining the proper usage of keywords or how to get your site unbanned. These outreaches to the SEO community are a very successful attempt by Google to help webmasters understand how to build more relevant content.
In a complete circle, by Google helping webmasters, they are really helping themselves and in turn, anyone that searches on Google.
Edited by ScottFish on Fri (9/1/06) at 01:53 PM
Everyone from Google has been very friendly with me. I haven’t seen any arrogance at. We all give Matt a hard time now and then because he acts like a regular guy. Every word he posts is under a serious microscope but he has a good sense of humor about it all.
BTW Matt, – It’s probably time to update the avatar. This is one of the very few pictures I’ve seen where you aren’t smiling. :)
I just wish Adam Lasnik and Kim Malone would blog about search and webmaster issues more often.
Edited by Hawaii SEO on Fri (9/1/06) at 02:33 PM
And yes - Adam's already attended a few events as a Google rep, much as Matt might. The whole crowd here loves Adam - he sat down with us for a few hours in San Jose and we really enjoyed his company; he seems to me to be a very down to earth guy and quite passionate about many things - food foremost among these :)
We've been taking it slowly, because I didn't want PR to freak out and have someone that they have to worry about. SES San Jose was Adam's first solo panel in front of a large audience, and a PR person was in the audience and saw him handle it with aplomb. So now PR is more comfortable, which makes it easier to send him out to speak next time..
http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/suggestions-f...
Getting help from a developer who actually works on a project and is proactively looking for people who need tech support, man it just doesn't get much better than that. In fact I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to come up with more than a handful of other companies who do that.
I never expected Vanessa to "register" and sort out issues with sitemaps in Cre8 forums.
I was hoping to find answers from other members there but not from her :)
probably a dig at Microsoft's corporate image and make Google look like friendly and approachable in a way to silence those who talk abt G being the next MS (not in the $$$ way, but in the corporate arrogant way)
interesting observations rand :)
Everyone listen to Vanessa Fox and Matt Cutts on Webmaster Radio recently?
Hawaii SEO - Almost fell out of my chair reading that on Adam's blog, wild and wacky guy... :)
but, has anyone had trouble with uneven ad serving lately? they cannot seem to fix this bug. which is unusual for them
also, I've been trying to get back in touch with their greater seattle team who seems to be tasked with some r&d of site maps.
Very true. As Google does a better job working with Webmasters and other SEM folks, everyone wins. The Web folks get access to better tools and info, there's then often more good info accessible to users on the Web, and Google's search results are made more relevant and comprehensive.
Hawaii SEO:
Yeah, I struggle with this, honest. I just am wary of opening up the floodgates, and intent upon keeping some of my off-hours as, well, off-hours, and I know that the minute I start talking about Google stuff with any depth or frequency, I'll have a community (beyond the communities are already participate in) that I'll be responsible for nurturing and building. It's so much less stressful to just have my blog be my own silly, personal space :). With that said, though, I know that when I was a non-Googler, I was always eager to learn more about Google, Googlers' day-to-day tasks, etc. So, as I said, it's a tough issue.
Rand:
I think that's a good description... an evangelist, sure, but I like the "connector"-type way of looking at my role; that's spot on! That better reflects the two-way nature of what I'm doing. Oh, and hey, thanks for the kind words, Rand! You've now fulfilled your end of the bargain and I'll destroy those incriminating photos. :P
RickM:
That'd be Vanessa and her team, indeed in Kirkland (near Seattle). Your best bet to give feedback / ask questions of that group is to post in the Sitemaps section of the Webmaster Help Google Group. Trust me, those posts get read :).
Other notes...
- I have a law degree, but never took the bar. So I'm only a quasi-lawyer-type.
- Yes, Vanessa absolutely rocks. Super woman. Super SUMO woman.
Anyway, I just have to say that this entire thread was a wonderfully awesome treat to read upon coming back from vacation... definitely made me quite happy :)
Matts just publish .....
“In essence, if a page hasn’t changed since the last time we fetched it, there’s no need to fetch it again. But even if we checked whether a page was unchanged, we didn’t update the crawl date in the cache–we’re changing that now.”
Lot of web sites use date and time controls these days for crawler’s frequent visit. Do you think this is a change for a web page???