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Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO

neat fun stuff

9 tips for the Google Mobile App for iPhoneNovember 18

Here are some tips to help you get the most out of Google’s new Mobile Application for the iPhone.

1. To get Google Mobile App on your iPhone, go to the App Store and search for “Google Mobile App,” or click on this link to install from a computer. If you have an older version of Google Mobile App installed, you might want to uninstall the older version before installing the newer version.
2. Voice recognition is turned off by default for non-U.S. users. To enable voice recognition, click on the “Settings” tab at the bottom of the screen and slide “Voice Search” to ON.
3. If you hold the iPhone up to your ear and don’t hear the “baBUM” sound to start talking, swing the iPhone down and back up to your ear. Sometimes a little wrist flick helps to tell the iPhone you want to search.
4. You can search things besides Google’s main web index. Do a regular query such as [daffodil pictures]:
   

   then press on the magnifying glass near the top left corner to bring up other options to search. By default you’re searching iPhone and Web, but you can also search Maps, Images, News, Shopping, or Wikipedia:

Google Adds Voice Recognition to iPhone AppNovember 17

I have a very good feeling about Google’s new iPhone app that does voice recognition. I’ve been playing with this voice recognition application for several weeks and I have to say that I’m really impressed. First and foremost, the voice recognition works really well. Crazy long-tail specialized vocabulary is tricky (more on that later), but for queries with normal words in them, the voice recognition is really accurate and I think it will get even better. You can say “population of Troy, New York” and you’re pretty likely to get good search results:

I like the slick interface, because all you have to do is start the app. When you want to do a search, just hold the iPhone to your ear. The iPhone’s accelerometer senses the movement and makes a “baBUM” noise to let you know when to talk. Then just say a query like [daffodil pictures] or whatever. It’s much smoother to experience than it is to write down. The net effect is as if you had some kind of Star Trek communicator device, except powered by Google instead of Spock and the rest of the crew.

I’m really impressed with the team that worked on this. They pul

A word about metrics, part III: market share of Google Docs?November 16

I’m not sure what Google Docs market share is, but I thought it would be interesting to mention a couple data points and add a new data point.

Data point #1: Compete. Compete just estimated that 4.4M visitors stopped by Google Docs in September, which is just a hair below 2.4% of the U.S. online population, according to them. Compete buys data from ISPs, among other sources, but doesn’t reveal which ISPs sell their surfing data, so it’s hard to tell if those ISPs’ users tend toward tech-savvy vs. newbie or affluent vs. lower income. One other metrics service (Nielsen//NetRatings) has claimed that Google Docs users tend to skew toward higher-incomes and are more likely to be technology early adopters.

Data point #2: ClickStream. A recent press release from ClickStream Technologies that claims that 1% of internet surfers use Google Docs. Honestly, this felt a little low to me. So I read about how they collected their data, and I have a hunch why ClickStream might have come up with lower numbers. From the press release:

Pubcon/WebmasterWorld conference, here I come!November 12

I arrive Wednesday afternoon for the 2008 Pubcon conference, and I’ll be staying until after the networking event on the last day, which is the heart of the event. It’s the heart because the networking event is held at a pub, and the original idea of Pubcon was that some of the best parts of a conference take place at the pub after the official conference is done.

If you see me, please come up and say hello! Tell me how you’re doing, or what you like or dislike about Google. I’ll be participating in the Search Engine Super Session that traditionally wraps up the formal part of the conference.

What are you likely to see if you head to Las Vegas? Well, here are some pictures that I’ve been meaning to post for a year. No joke, I’m that behind on things I want to blog. First off, you’ll meet lots of search engine optimizers (SEOs) and webmasters:

As you can see, they’re a very fun and friendly bunch of folks. And if you’re lucky, you might run across a celebrity. Last year, we saw David Caruso:

The rumor was that

Fun emailNovember 7

Every so often I get an email like this:

Dear Webmaster,

I have browsed your site and I’m interested in purchasing advertising space in it.
I am mainly interested in placing a new page on your site with content and links that I will supply.

Please let me know if you would like to discuss this further or if you have other ideas.

Kind Regards,
Rob

Normally I just delete junk like this, but I decided to reply. I wrote back “Can you show some other examples of stuff you’ve done before?” And usually at this point, the person realizes that I’m a webspam person at Google and shuts up. But I got a reply:

My offer is this:
I want you to create a new page on your site.
I will send you a gambling related article with my links on it that will be
on the new page.
I wish that this page will have only my links on it with no other external
links.
Also I wish that this page will have a link from all the pages on the site.
Please let me know what you think and how much will it cost to me.
Best regards,
Rob.

I wrote back and asked Rob for an example page; we’ll see if he bites.

Later: He did bite.

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