Matt Cutts Explaining How Search Works (for Sesame Street?)

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This is a golden oldie for those who are just starting out or don’t know the basics of a search engine. For the others its watching Matt Cutts explaining search to Sesame Street.

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  • http://www.hazelnutfilms.com Peter Rigg

    I remember this video well. It’s actually quite good at explaining the fundamental principles, however I think it’s primarily aimed at the public, or perhaps Sesame Street :-)

    Mr Cutts’ line about Google’s commitment to impartial search results really depends on whether or not you consider Google giving extra weight to its own products (such as YouTube for video, and now G+ or ‘SPYW’ as it’s catchily labelled) to be truly impartial. I think he re-phrase it to say “Yeah we’re favouring our own products, but hey, we’ve got to eat too”.

  • Arne van Elk

    Many times I’ve used this video in instructional sessions. In my experience it’s very useful to lay out the basics of Google search, but I do wonder: is it still a good idea to show this in SEO workshops today? Should Matt Cutts publish a new video taking into account SPYW, personalized search etc? It might quickly become too complicated that way. What do you think?

    • http://www.basvandenbeld.com Bas van den Beld

      Keep in mind that Search Plus Your World is still only working on the Google.com, not yet on the other tlds.

    • http://www.hazelnutfilms.com/ Peter Rigg

      It conveys the fundamental principles of search in a visually engaging way for beginners, without going into the details. So, I think it’s still a great introduction for your SEO workshops and you’ll struggle to find a high quality video that does the job better. And as you suggested, it’s very complicated (not to mention time consuming and impractical) to constantly edit videos so that they reflect the evolving nuances of search.

      Once SPYW is made live across other tlds, I’m pretty sure we’ll see an catchy explanation video from Google that explains SPYW to its users.

      • http://twitter.com/avanelk Arne van Elk

        Thanks guys, I guess I’ll keep using it for the time being. It’s nice to have something to refer to when you’re talking about the Google index, SERP’s, the importance of titles, links and all that.