InsideGoogle

GoogleGuy Revealed: Matt Cutts Confesses!

Matt Cutts finally admitted to the worst-kept secret in the search community: That he is, indeed, GoogleGuy. GoogleGuy was, for a while, the only candid public voice from Google on SEO issues, but Matt must have convinced his bosses at some point that an honest personal blog was an even better way to go. Now that Matt spends his days blogging and helping webmasters optimize their sites and rank well in Google the honest way, he must not need the anonymity GoogleGuy provides him at message boards like WebMasterWorld. Plus, everybody knew anyway.

Danny Sullivan was there when the hunt finally ended, at Search Engine Strategies San Jose:

I moderated the panel, and the confession came out when a member of the audience flat out asked Matt if he was GoogleGuy. Matt hesitated just a moment, and I could swear I could almost hear the internal debate of “should I finally confess or not.” And then he did, saying as Rand notes that he sort of backed into being the GoogleGuy who posts on forums and blogs. Matt then added that today, GoogleGuy might be one of many different people from Google commenting in public areas.

As Danny points out (and I shall reword, with zero tact), if multiple people are posting as GoogleGuy, and the guy known to be GoogleGuy isn’t always the one posting, shouldn’t they just cut the anonymous crap and have everybody post under their names? At the very least, retire the GoogleGuy name and have the others post under various names, so when the contradict each other, it actually makes sense.

August 15th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Search Optimization, Culture, General | 3 comments