Matt Cutts
Matt Cutts | |||
---|---|---|---|
Cutts in 2008 | |||
Born |
Matthew Cutts 1972/1973 (age 43–44)[1] | ||
Alma mater |
University of Kentucky (BS '95) UNC-Chapel Hill (MS '98) | ||
Occupation | Programmer | ||
Known for | SafeSearch, Google's family filter, Webspam Team | ||
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Matthew "Matt" Cutts (born 1972 or 1973)[1] is an American software engineer. He is the former head of the web spam team at Google,[2] and is currently on leave in his role of working with the search quality team on search engine optimization issues.[3][4]
Education
Cutts completed his high school career in Morehead, Kentucky at Rowan County Senior High School.[5] He received a bachelor's degree in computer science and mathematics from the University of Kentucky in 1995.[6][7] He went on to receive a Master of Science degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1998.[8]
Career
Cutts started his career in search when working on his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In January 2000 Cutts joined Google as a software engineer.[3] At 2007 PubCon, Cutts stated that his field of study was computer science; he then moved into the field of information retrieval, and search engines after taking two outside classes from the university's Information and Library Science department.[9] Before working at the Search Quality group at Google, Cutts worked at the ads engineering group and SafeSearch, Google's family filter, which he designed.[3][10] There he earned the nickname "porn cookie guy" by giving his wife's homemade cookies to any Googler who provided an example of unwanted pornography in the search results.[11]
Cutts is one of the co-inventors listed upon a Google patent related to search engines and web spam.[12]
In 2006, The Wall Street Journal said Cutts "is to search results what Alan Greenspan was to interest rates".[13]
In November 2010, Cutts started a contest challenging developers to make Microsoft Kinect more compatible with the Linux operating system. At the time, Microsoft had stated that the use of Kinect with devices other than the Xbox 360 was not supported by them.[14]
Cutts has given advice and made statements on help related to the use of the Google search engine and related issues.[15]
In January 2012, on the news that Google had violated its own quality guidelines, Cutts defended the downgraded PageRank of the Google Chrome homepage results noting that it was not given special dispensation.[16][17]
In July 2014, a statement was released on his blog by Matt himself, stating that he was going to take a few months of leave to spend more time with his family and try new things, including a half ironman race.[18] Upon joining Google Matt agreed with his wife to work for 4–5 years and then spend a period of time together. Fifteen years later, Matt made the decision to do so.
In May 2015, Google announced it has placed someone new in Matt's position as the head of the web spam team. But unlike Matt, this person will not be an official spokesperson for publisher and webmaster issues.[19]
References
- 1 2 "Matt Cutts: The Greenspan of Google". Bloomberg Businessweek. March 17, 2011.
Matt Cutts, the 38-year-old
- ↑ "Google Has New Head Of Web Spam But Won't Be The "New Matt Cutts"". Search Engine Land. May 22, 2015.
Matt Cutts remains on leave, but Search Engine Land can report that Google does have someone new in his position of head of web spam fighting.
- 1 2 3 "About Me". Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO.
- ↑ Ward, Mark (June 8, 2004). "Inside the Google search machine". BBC News Online. Retrieved May 4, 2008.
- ↑ Grant Stevens (13 July 2012). "Google this: Matt Cutts, hometown proud". The Morehead News. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
- ↑ Olgiate, Christina (October 21, 2012). "Google employee Matt Cutts returns to UK". The Kentucky Kernel. University of Kentucky.
- ↑ "Just Google Him: CS alumnus talks about how UK prepared him to work for the Search giant". University of Kentucky, Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering. August 26, 2011.
- ↑ "Graduate School Honors Fellowship Winners". News And Notes. Department of Computer Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Spring 1999.
- ↑ Kaushal, Navneet. "PubCon – Matt Cutts Keynote". PubCon 2007. WebProNews. Retrieved October 7, 2012.
- ↑ "Google's chastity belt too tight". ZDNet. April 23, 2004. Retrieved January 13, 2015.
- ↑ "'Google': An interesting read on a powerhouse company". USA Today. November 13, 2005.
- ↑ Acharya, A., et al., (2005) Information retrieval based on historical data
- ↑ "Readers React to 'SEO' Contest". The Wall Street Journal. February 16, 2006. Retrieved January 13, 2015.
- ↑ "Kinect hacked days after release". BBC News. BBC. November 12, 2010. Retrieved November 15, 2010.
- ↑ http://www.webpronews.com/matt-cutts-talks-keyword-density-2011-12
- ↑ Arthur, Charles (January 4, 2012). "Google shoves Chrome down search rankings after sponsored blog mixup". London: The Guardian.
- ↑ Shankland, Stephen (January 4, 2012). "Two days after Google flub, Unruly raises $25 million". CNET.
- ↑ Cutts, Matt. "On Leave". Matt Cutts Blog. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
- ↑ "Google Has New Head Of Web Spam But Won't Be The "New Matt Cutts"". Retrieved 2015-06-18.
Further reading
- David A. Vise; Mark Malseed (November 15, 2005). The Google Story. Delacorte Press. ISBN 0-553-80457-X.
External links
- Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO – his personal blog
- Matt Cutts at TED
- 2009 BusinessWeek profile
- Interview to Matt Cutts at SEOmoz