What types of directories are seen as sources of paid links?

What types of directories are seen as sources of paid links?

Fábio Ricotta from Brazil asks:

"Will Google consider Yahoo! Directory and BOTW as source of paid links? If no, why is this different from another site that sell links?"

Matt Answers the Question "Is Over Optimization Bad for a Website?"

Google’s Matt Cutts On "Over Optimization"

Matt Cutts, Head of Google's Webspam team has been producing daily videos answering questions from the world wide SEO community. Many of these videos having useful information for all levels of Search Engine Optimizers. I wanted to share Matt's most recent videos and point you to his other videos too.

The latest video is on "over optimization" where Matt answers the question "Is over optimization bad for a website?"

You can see all of the Webmaster Central team videos at YouTube, there is a wealth of information there, so eat it up.

Google for Webmasters Tutorial: Other Resources

A webmaster tutorial video that introduces other useful Google resources for webmasters.

Google for Webmasters Tutorial: Intro to Webmaster Central

A webmaster tutorial video that introduces what Webmaster Central offers.

Google for Webmasters Tutorial: Ranking

A webmaster tutorial video that covers how sites are displayed in Google search results.

Google for Webmasters Tutorial: Crawling and Indexing

A webmaster tutorial video that addresses crawling and indexing of sites.

Google for Webmasters Tutorial: Discoverability

A webmaster tutorial video that covers how Google can find your site.

A day in the life of webmaster support

Follow Googler Maile Ohye as she goes through her day at Webmaster Central, our one-stop shop for webmaster support and resources. Check out interviews with Googlers such as Matt Cutts, Michael Wyszomierski, Reid Yokoyama, Jonathan Simon and Evan Tang.

Requesting reconsideration using Google Webmaster Tools

If your site has stopped showing in Google's search results, there are some steps you can take to help reintroduce it to Google. From checking the site's robots.txt file to submitting a reconsideration request, this video tells the story of one webmaster investigating his site's disappearance from Google.

IP Delivery: Background and Considerations

Senior Support Engineer Maile Ohye explains the background and implementation considerations for using IP delivery on your site.

Setting a geographic target for your site in Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa talks about how you can use the geographic targeting tool in Webmaster Tools to associate your site with a particular region.

Matt Cutts Discusses Snippets

Google guru Matt Cutts discusses how best to optimize your site for Google. Matt Cutts joined Google as a software engineer in January 2000. He is currently the head of Google's Webspam team

Matt Cutts Discusses the Importance of alt Tags

Google guru Matt Cutts discusses how best to optimize your site for Google

Matt Cutts Discusses Webmaster Tools

Google guru Matt Cutts discusses how best to optimize your site for Google

Is Google putting more weight on brands in rankings?

On February 26, 2009, Google software engineer Matt Cutts collected questions on Google Moderator and answered many of them on video.

Monica from Madison, WI asked:

Can you verify that Google is putting more weight on "brands" in search engine rankings? If the answer is "Yes" -- what is Google's definition of a brand? Inspired by Aaron Wall's post: http://www.seobook.com/google-branding

Two questions about nofollow

On February 26, 2009, Google software engineer Matt Cutts collected questions on Google Moderator and answered many of them on video.

Vince Samios from the United Kingdom asked:

Do you feel that the widespread and blanket use of nofollow tags is devaluing Google's search algorithms? Examples such as Wikipedia, where ALL external links are nofollow. Does Wikipedia mean nothing to Google's algorithms?

jonaths from Brighton, UK asked:

Do Google take into account quality factors from nofollowed links when the links come from well established authority websites, such as Wikipedia?

Will Google provide a rank-checking service?

On February 26, 2009, Google software engineer Matt Cutts collected questions on Google Moderator and answered many of them on video.

Mark Lykle from Oslo, Norway asked:

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? Why not make a better product instead of going to war against these programs?

Should large corporations use rel=canonical?

On February 26, 2009, Google software engineer Matt Cutts collected questions on Google Moderator and answered many of them on video.

Terry Cox from Orlando, FL asked:

In regards to the new canonicalization tag, does it make sense for large corporations to consider placing that tag on every page due to marketing tracking codes and large levels of duplicate URLs like faceted pages and load balancing servers?

Is redirecting a large number of domains suspicious?

On February 26, 2009, Google software engineer Matt Cutts collected questions on Google Moderator and answered many of them on video.

cweave from Dallas, TX asked:

When permanently redirecting (301) a large number of domains (read: more than 10) to 1 domain does Google flag this as suspicious? What considerations does Google look at? For the purposes of this question let's assume this is a consolidation move.

Does the position of keywords in the URL affect ranking?

On February 26, 2009, Google software engineer Matt Cutts collected questions on Google Moderator and answered many of them on video.

Adeel from Manchester, UK asked:

Does the position of keywords in the URL have a significant impact:
example.com/keyword/London is better than example.com/London/keyword?