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248 official Google answers to common SEO questions

Google's Matt Cutts answers SEO questions

Matt Cutts works for the search quality group in Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues. He is well known in the SEO community for enforcing the Google Webmaster Guidelines and cracking down on link spam.

Search our Q & A database to find official answers to your SEO questions. Watch the videos in which Matt Cutts answers questions or read short summaries of the answers.

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All questions about the topic "Query":

Question Views
1. In the search results, Google will often display a snippet appropriate to the specific search query - often disregarding the meta description. Is Google doing away with meta description use like they die with meta keywords? 528
2. How accurate is Google's backlink-check (link:...)? 520
3. Does Google try to return results based on signals other than popularity? 481
4. I have a client who was hacked. The SEO consultant said things were cleaned up, but they weren't correctly. All 30,000 viagra/cialis type and paid links have been removed, but no improvement in SERPs. We send reconsideration. What do we do now? 445
5. When will Google create a software similar to Web Position so that SEOs, spam fighters and regular webmasters can check rankings etc. without violating the guidelines? 429
6. What do you predict will be the big changes to 'search' as we know it today over the next 3 years? 417
7. Seeing as the "link:" search query is hardly ever accurate, what would your favorite/preferred way to check for inbound links be if you were a webmaster? 397
8. As far as big brands go, why is it that they seem to do well regardless of relevance, content or links when analyzing keyword placement in search engine results pages? 377
9. Google Search Tips 370
10. AdWords keyword tool gives an estimate of search traffic for a specific (or broad) keyword - How much (%) of this traffic do you believe are search marketers, SEOs, analysts and even business owners etc searching their own targeted keywords? 361
11. Why is Google still taking notice of DMOZ? 353
12. How reliable is the 'site:domain.com' query in determining the number of pages in the Google index? 350
13. When you search for something, let's say "LinkedIn", you will notice there are some quick links on the search result such as "Jobs, About, Advanced" etc. How does that work? 346
14. "Query deserves freshness." Fact or fiction? 308
15. Site hacks have been on the rise, especially in CMS platforms like Joomla and WordPress. If our site was hacked and damage was done by the hackers (doorway pages inserted and spammed) but removed within days do we have to worry about a penalty? 307
16. Is it possible to exclude Experts Exchange from search results? 303
17. In some queries I can see the date of the post/article in the description snippet (at Google search). Can I tell Google not to use it? 281
18. Can you talk about the change in Google's referrer string? 267
19. How come the search queries report in Webmaster Tools shows some keywords ranking and when we search them they are nowhere to be found? 260
20. "Real-time indexation" on Google, when we use site:www.sitename.com; is this a possibility in the near future? 223
21. When did "Did you mean" search results begin to be displayed? 212

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