Hi John. Thanks so much for asking me to participate – it’s a great honour to talk with you. Odd that you mention about my professional background. It has dawned on me that I might be the only professional SEO on the group (I wasn’t sure about this), and I’m slightly surprised that there isn’t more participation by other professionals. I’m quite sure that there are lurkers from the SEM industry, as the group is an excellent educational resource. More thoughts on this aspect a little later. Back to your questions now.

Why do you spend so much of your time in the Google Webmaster Help groups – isn’t that almost like giving away the work that you would normally charge for? What’s in it for you?

Funny, I’m a little embarrassed that I don’t get more time to contribute on the group. I’m not sure why that is, but I suppose I feel a small amount of ownership having posted as regularly as possible. I actually went to my profile recently to try and see how I first came across the group. I can’t say with 100% confidence how I found the group, but I was able to uncover what it was that sent me there. I was trying to find out whether Google would give .EU cTLD any special treatment in terms of country level searches. My first interaction with the group was with another ‘regular’, and that individual gave his time and knowledge freely. There’s something very endearing to actions which are without motive.

I’ve been very lucky both personally and professionally in the past few years. I live a comfortable lifestyle and I’m getting opportunities to work on projects that even I would never have imagined not so long ago. In a way I owe some of my success to the group. There is only one resource I know of that provides more insight into Search Engines in general, and Google in particular. That resource is action – learning by doing. The group comes in a very close second place. The knowledge shared there is absolutely priceless. The individuals who contribute are, by and large, equal to and above many ‘professionals’ in the SEM field. As I said, the group is as close to the coalface as you can get without actually doing everything yourself.

What’s in it for me? A few things. The chance to mingle and converse with some very clever and insightful people (Random Chit-Chat can contain some gems), the ability to broaden my knowledge base, and, quite simply, the ability to commit the odd good deed or two and feel good about yourself.

As a professional website optimizer, for search engines, usability and accessibility, how do you rate the answers given in the groups? Do you feel that site owners are generally being given good advice?

I’m neck-deep in this kind of stuff professionally. I know that in some cases individuals and companies have saved or made themselves huge sums of money by logging into a Google Group and asking a question. I can safely say that some of the advice given there for free would attract substantial fees had it come from a large agency of superstar SEO. I think that speaks volumes for those ‘regulars’ who help people out day-in, day-out.

In my opinion the quality of advice given is generally of a very high quality. And I think the Group self-regulates itself pretty well, so if you see bad advice, more often than not it will be debunked fairly soon after by a regular. I can’t say that I’ve seen many instances where bad advice has been given (excepting the period where certain negative forces existed in the Group).

This might cause some grief, but I’m going to state for the record that I don’t believe that compliant mark-up makes much of a difference. I am very committed to clean mark-up, but I think modern crawlers can just about munch through anything, and bad mark-up is rarely the primary cause of ranking issues (indexation perhaps more so). Connected to this, I not a subscriber to the broken META validation problem. I know the code breaks validation, but if it really was an issue I think Google would do something about it. I actually shot Phil Payne an email on this once, and while I have the utmost respect for both Phil’s experience and view on this issue, I still just cannot bring myself to buy into this particular fact (or myth?).

I think the greatest shame about the group is the architecture of the application itself – some absolutely fantastic information gets buried by the crap platform that is ‘Groups’. I’ve been on it for near a year now, and I still can’t figure out a good way to sort the wheat from the chaff (and then to find the wheat later on… *sigh*).

You have a lot of really great content on your site – is there a reason why you don’t seem to promote that content in the Google groups?

Thank you. The beauty of the Group is that it is impartial and there are virtually never hidden agendas. I think that if I or any other poster was to start promoting their wares on the Group it would be a very negative development. Besides, I’ve never been one for overtly promoting myself or my business (inside the Group, or out), I prefer to talk about those things I have a passion for, and it just so happens that SEO, on-line marketing and on-line business are topics dear to me.

Oh, and just in case that’s misread by anyone – I’m not saying that it’s bad to point at your own content, just that I have to be a little more careful than others given the potential for perceived conflicts.

In the groups and in forums everywhere, the question of whether or not it’s worth it to make sure that a site is valid (X)HTML code and complies with the generally accepted usability and accessibility guidelines is always a hot topic. On your blog you often mention such errors in sites that you review, why is valid code, usability and accessibility so important to you as a SEO?

As a child I used to love Lego. Every time I got something new I’d rip open the box, discard the instructions and build from the picture. (Ended with my progression to Tecnics…) But seriously, you can obviously see that I don’t read ahead, hence I’ve sort of answered this above.

The valid code issue comes into play for me because it’s just so easy to manipulate good mark-up (tables for tabular data, not layout please). In terms of usability – well SEO is about achieving high ranks in the SERPs, but traffic is rather pointless if you cannot convert it. I’ve turned away quite a few jobs because I know that the site owner wont re-develop her site, and all the traffic in the world wont make any difference to the bottom line. In the past 6 months a large proportion of my work has been in usability and conversion optimisation actually.

Accessibility is a no-brainer for me. You needn’t conform with every point from the strictest guidelines, but why not give as wide an audience to your content? The added bonus is that crawlers rarely if ever have issues with well coded accessible websites. It’s a win-win.

Why is the focus of many of your blog postings on sites for and in Ireland? (I love the local touch with the unique and interesting content about search and websites in general.)

I suppose it’s a comfort zone thing. Most people tend to write about what they know best. And besides, I love to stir things up when I see websites that are making those stupid mistakes that require more effort than doing things well. (On an aside, controversy can be a very strong marketing tool, but manage wisely )

Is there anything I can pass on to Google, from you in particular, as a professional SEO, SEM and someone very active in the Google Groups?

*sigh* where do I start…

1. Webmaster console used to be great, but the information is becoming so stale that it borders on useless. (Part of me thinks this is all part of the great anti-SEO crusade Google is currently on.)
2. Stop crapping out my searches with spyware interstitials – I’m logged in, you can identify me, I’m not infected. (Further tactic in Google’s anti-SEO crusade.)
3. More Blue badges in the Group please – if you guys can take time out to hang in WMW, surely it’s not too much to expect a little interaction in your own ‘Official’ support forum?
4. On a local note – given the huge base here in Ireland (’Paddyplex’) why isn’t Google more active in the local web community? MS puts you guys to aboslute shame with the local support they give to grass roots. Not even a peep out of Google.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

Very, very well done on your new job. Something tells me ‘perfect fit’ applies here. The only negative might be that Google’s gain will be the wider community’s loss… Hand on heart, you’re definitely one of the kindest and most knowledgeable people I’ve met on my short travels across the Interweb.

Thanks for your time, Richard!

No, thank you John.

I know that wasn’t a question but I would like to comment anyway. Although you are not the first to suggest I am not of this world, serious or not, I feel it is not so much a question of identifying the “where”, but identifying the “when”.

I think had I lived 150 to 200 years ago, I wouldn’t seem as much an alien as I do to so many people. More often than not, people who I communicate with over a period of time before ever meeting in person say something similar, I seem odd to them because they try to identify me with a place and fail but after meeting me in person, understand it is not a matter of identifying a place, but a place in time.

Many people are still put off after realizing that but a few people are able to take it in stride. You can tell a lot about a person by how they react to extreme situations and I guess I can be a bit extreme at times.

Someone once called me an “anachronistic anomaly”. That seems to describe me as well as any other description I have heard, at least descriptions appropriate for mixed company.

So Craig, with a brain the size of a planet, I’m sure you have some really smart and cool things to do. What drives you to spend so much time in the Google webmaster help groups?

Good question, as in the best question have no real answers. The closest I think I can come to a real answer though is that I enjoy observing how things work. One of my first memories is of my parents taking me and my two sisters to a zoo where there was a carousel. While my sisters were busy watching the pretty horses, which were just carved and painted wood, I was watching the gears and shafts and cams and wheels looking to see how it all worked.

Later, much later, when I was working with particle accelerators, some the size of 5 story buildings, there would be some sort of problem but one had to have a pretty good idea of what it was because as often seemed the case and as Murphy’s Law would have it, problems usually occurred in the least accessible spot and it could take up to a couple of days just to get to where the problem might be.

If the problem wasn’t there, all that time was wasted. But, it also wasn’t good enough just to know where the problem was, one also had to have an idea of how to fix it and maybe more importantly, how to keep it from happening again and again. All of what went into getting proficient at that was observing what one could of available data from what one could see and then coming up with a reasonable scenario as to what the cause might be where one couldn’t see and then testing that scenario as much as possible before putting any plan into action.

In Google’s Webmaster Tools Help Group, I am able to observe a lot of different situations and the more I see of a given situation, the more I have to go on to try to come up with possible scenarios to understand what may be happening. So I guess what drives me is what has always driven me, a desire to observe and understand.

How did you find the Google Webmaster Help groups in the first place? Looking at your first posts it doesn’t look like you had any particular problem that needed to be solved.

I found the group through the Google Webmaster Tools which I found through the “Add URL” page. I had just launched my first publicly accessible web site and had heard of submitting URLs to the various search engines so I asked “Professor Google” how to do it for the search engines I knew about the most and found what I was looking for. From there, I played with the Webmaster Tools for a very short time which was primarily due to there being no real data to look at when a site is first indexed and then started digging into the help files and was directed to the Groups forum. It was not so much that I was having any particular problem at the time, or since, but more so, someone felt it worthwhile to publish all that information for some reason, not reading it would seem to be a serious waste of both their time and mine.

You are right though, I didn’t have any particular problem nor do I think I would have asked had I one. I have been around long enough on various technical forums and the like to know that there is rarely a question that hasn’t been answered or doesn’t have an answer somewhere although very possibly being “hidden” and in need of being dug for.

On the other hand, I also know that for some questions, there are no answers or at least no answers likely to be forthcoming so before asking too much, I’d want to know what questions are even likely to receive an answer of any use.

But, search engines at that time I had very little experience with, other than as a search user and having already dealt with large amounts of data, it intrigued me as to how one might deal with essentially archiving the entire Internet and more importantly, making that archive available in an intelligent and useful manner. Large amounts of data don’t impress me as I’ve dealt with huge databases of tera and peta-record size but the easy, intelligent and fast access to the contained data is the real challenge.

What was it that grabbed your attention about the web? Why did you decide to put together your own website?

I wouldn’t say I was particularly “grabbed” by the web. It just seemed like a much easier platform to develop applications for. I’ve written in almost every language from machine code to C++ and at one time burning EEPROMs just to be able to test a section of code out. With PHP, Javascript and MySQL, I can whip up an application in a matter of hours. It may and very likely will look like hell but the basic functionality is there, sort of a proof of concept if you will.

As for cass-hacks specifically though, I’d built a lot of toys of various levels of usefulness over a period of time and although any one specific toy may not be all that useful, the processes that go into making them work is always useful because a given toy’s functionality is limited to what it was designed to do as well as a little bit being extensible for other purposes if designed well but the processes that go into making any toy work can be used over and over again to build whatever one can imagine. Also, every language has a lot of very simple syntax that is pretty boring to look at but can become interesting to the point of being exciting when combined in ways one might not originally have thought of.

Although straying a bit from the mark, I think the most interesting project I have documented on my site so far is one that gets the least amount of traffic. That project is a user notification system that is actually “agent” based, i.e. artificial life or as is commonly referred to as artificial intelligence, AI. Many people think that “AI” is some complex rule processor that attempts to simulate intelligent thought but that is only science fiction and pretty much had been given up on many years ago. Most of the work done in this area over the past couple of decades has been “Agent based”, creating simple little entities programmed to do very simple tasks and then releasing them to do what they were programmed to do. Where this ties in with what I have been talking about though is that once I came up with the method of implementing the functionality I wanted to support, it took me all of about 20 minutes to do it using DOM, CSS and Javascript whereas trying to do the same thing in just about any other programming environment would have taken days.

Once you have worked with different technologies, you usually get a grasp for the general problems that could come up when implementing them. What unexpected difficulties did you run into while working on your first site(s)?

This is going to be a boring answer. ) None.

I guess from my past experience, I do things a little different than many people. I start out with a list of requirements for a given task and then look into the various methods of satisfying the requirements, with all their possible positives and minuses and then choose the available “tools” that allow me to do the most with the least. By the time I actually get to building something, it is sort of boring because then it is most often just a matter of “plugging and chugging”, a phrase I got from a Calculus professor in the past which basically means, set up the equations, plug in the variable data and then chug through the calculations. Once you got to the “Plug and Chug” stage, it was all pretty much done.

If you came to a situation where you absolutely had to get a website to rank high for competitive terms, which methods would you apply first?

Probably the first thing I would do is go out and hire an SEO. Sorry, boring answer. OK, first, I’d have some limitations on whether or not I even attempted it in the first place. I’d have to be interested in and/or have some experience in the subject matter because getting different sites to rank well is not the same for all sites. Second, I’d take a look at what the past experience of the site has been and how it is doing currently and then I’d look at what are the short term and long term goals. I guess what all that means is that getting a website to rank high for competitive terms only, is a waste of time, energy and money.

But, if I didn’t care about all that and had someone else’s money to waste, I’d first make sure the site/page was even capable of ranking for the terms in the first place by making sure the terms even existed on any of the pages. Then I’d make sure there was as much information from as many different directions as possible on the subject of the target terms and then I’d work to get enough links to the site as necessary so as to make sure the page(s) was(were) even available for searches in the first place.

What I can’t do though is make people search for the targeted terms. So many people talk about wanting to rank well for this that and the other thing but so often is the case, no one is really searching for what is being targeted. I know some people use keyword generators to find out what people are searching for but I also feel that people who then decide what content to put on their site based solely on what will gain the most traffic are doing a disservice to both themselves as well as their potential visitors.

You seem to have seen a lot of corporate environments and worked in a lot of groups, is there anything about Google that was completely unexpected to you?

I feel another boring answer coming on. No, not really. Google, like all companies, is made up of people. Companies may have their policies but it is people that put them into action. A company could have the most negative policies in the world but due to the people in its employ, the company is seen in a much more positive light than a company that may have the most altruistic policies in the world with assholes implementing them.

Google seems to be the best of both worlds though, company policies seeming to tend toward ensuring equality for all involved with people implementing them that also seem genuinely concerned about the people they actually serve, the users of their various products and services. Were it not the case, I wouldn’t be sticking around because it wouldn’t make sense supporting someone else in being an asshole when I can enjoy being a much bigger one all by myself, why share? On the other hand, when I see a situation, much like with Google, where many people feel the need to view Google as evil or have ulterior motives where having any would be counterproductive, if I can in any way help someone to possibly see the other side of things, I feel I have done some good.

Were it not the case of Google being a basically positive company with obviously positive people working for it, there wouldn’t be so many of them out there putting themselves in the public eye and speaking as much for themselves as they do in efforts to try to explain as much as they can about the company they work for and with.

Turning the tables on Google, assume you had full access to everything and all the help that you needed, what would you change?

It wouldn’t really be a matter of “turning the tables” and although I definitely feel another boring answer coming on, I don’t know enough about what goes on internally to want to change anything. How could I know that what I wanted to change wouldn’t actually make things worse unless I knew why what I wanted to change was the way it was in the first place?

On the other hand, were I to have the opportunity, I would like to improve on some things, mainly things that I have been exposed to. I’d love to revamp the Webmaster tools and make them more timely and informative to the extent possible. Getting rid of tools that are of little use while expanding on others that may seem of little use but could be much more valuable if the data they offered was expanded and made more accessible to searching through. Also, I’d love to rewrite the Google Groups application as it seems to have the worst of all possible worlds.

Its use of Javascript, has to be about the most counterproductive as I have ever seen. There are also a number of things that could be done using Javascript, but aren’t currently, that could make the Groups much easier to use. About the only thing the Groups application has gotten right, in my opinion, is making it so that the functions of the Groups application work with Javascript enabled or disabled, which is actually a big accomplishment considering so many of the Javascript applications similar to it don’t work at all without Javascript.

Also, and I don’t know how much can be done in this area as I don’t know how it is currently implemented but one thing I would like to tackle would be improving the reliability of the various functions of the Groups application as it gets downright discouraging to use more often than I would like any application I was responsible for to be.

Is there anything more you’d like to add at the moment?

Other than thanking you for what has been my first interview in a LOOOOONNNNNGGGG time, I can’t think of anything I’d like to add.

Thanks for your time, Craig!

Although I’ve had a feeling this interview was coming, and dreading it, it wasn’t as painful as I thought so I thank you for making the process not too terribly intolerable!

Looking at your first posts, I see a desperate webmaster, someone even screaming for “HELP!!!” in the thread titles. How did you find the Google Webmaster Help groups and what made you decide to originally post about your problems there?

Hmm.. how did I find the groups – I think I might have searched “How to contact Google” and came across the webmaster help groups there. I had to – I’d come across a problem that I just couldn’t get an answer to by doing a regular Google search, I knew it was an unusual problem and, like many other webmasters, I figured I might be able to find a real, living, breathing Googler somewhere to talk about the problem.

Did you get a satisfactory answer to your original questions in the groups? What elements were vital to that outcome?

Well, for some reason the answers to that post (it was back in 2006) have been ‘lost in the system’ but I did get a lot of hypotheticals from the regular group members – but nothing that helped, unfortunately.

How that came about is a very long story, but hell, you’ve asked, so I’ll tell you . The person who owned the intellectual property we had been laboring to develop for the last two years had turned nasty – and was annoyed that we used their name on our website (and outranked them for it). My business partner and I were receiving ~20+ calls a day between us from the person. The phone calls started to elevate to the extent that we considered them threatening, and we were forced to call the police.

In the wash-up we just decided that – as a family business – we weren’t prepared to have to explain to my business partners kids (both under 5) why mum was crying and the police were ‘coming for a visit’ on a Saturday morning – so we decided to remove the name in question to stop further stress, even though we had every right to use it.

So I took the quickest path possible, made the changes to the website and asked Google to remove the cache. It had unintended consequences – it totally removed the ’snippets’ from our website (our listings were title only), and we were left with a huge traffic decline. This, on top of everything else was absolutely crippling to the business. So, by the time I posted here I was getting a bit desperate – and it’s one reason I’m generally patient with people that come to the groups angry.

In the end, unfortunately no one here could give me the answer to the problem – it was out of their control. I hadn’t realized that a cache removal would remain in effect for 6 months. The main element that was vital to my outcome was Vanessa Fox (the beaut person that she is) who saw my post and stepped in and tweaked the system to let my site back in.

You’re a webmaster, you had issues with your site and Google and posted in the groups. If a webmaster came up to you and asked if it would be worthwhile to post about his problems there, what would you tell them? Would it make any difference if the webmaster was new to webmastering?

That’s an easy question. We’ve got a great community of beaut people here – you just don’t spend hours helping people gratis unless you’re passionate about it, so we tend to be universally ‘nice’ to people, especially newbies. I’d say ‘Go ahead, write your question, try to be succinct about it and TRY NOT TO PANIC!’. I’d also make sure that they knew that the people helping would more than likely be knowledgeable volunteers, so make sure you check your frustration at the door

What was it that made you stick around in the Google Groups, not only to ask more questions but also to help answer other people’s questions? What makes the Groups special compared to other forums?

Well I think that JLH and yourself made the effort to email me and help with some problems I was having with a hobby site of mine called ‘utheguru’ – that was an awesome gesture and made me feel at home. That kind of thing, along with the occasional guest post by a Googler, is what makes this forum special

In parallel to that, things had degenerated a lot further with our business to the extent that lawyers had become involved, and I had to put my PhD (and hence, income) on hold to spend my time dealing with that. I was looking for a stress release, and I’ve always been the kind of person that finds learning natural, cathartic and relaxing – so I got hooked.

If I’m honest, I also figured it was a way I could work towards another goal of mine – working with Google.

As an undergrad student, I read Page and Brin’s paper, and thought – “wow, that’s a neat idea”. The whole concept of Pagerank and linkages is something that’s really been around in science for hundreds of years. A good scientific paper is one that references other authors widely, and a reputable scientist is one that has papers referenced by many others. The CONCEPT of Pagerank is really nothing new in science – it just took a neat idea by those two fellows to convert the concept into something that could transcend academia and become relevant to that new thing called ‘the Internet’. Google became popular, first, amongst scientists – that’s something I observed and there was certainly alot of buzz about it within that sector of society before it ever became the household name it is now.

I’ve been a Google user ever since, and I’m fascinated by the system itself, how it works, the company, the culture – everything about Google appeals to me.

Further to the reasons Google fascinates me (you didn’t ask but I’m gonna tell you anyway.. haha), before the rather wild ride of backless lingerie began, I’d worked for some time as a Scientist with the Sugar industry (especially on the field / mechanisation side), and one of the major things I worked on there was reward algorithms – trying to use disparate manufacturing measures at the mill end of the system to send ‘quality’ signals to harvester operators. Hmmm.. how do I explain this – well, I’ve gotta go into a little background detail…

Sugarcane harvesters chop up cane into little lengths, about 8 inches long, called billets. Along with the cane, the leaf material is also chopped up. If that leaf material reaches the mill, it can have a bad affect on the quality of the sugar produced, and it also makes the cane more expensive to process and transport. So, the harvesting machines have big 6 foot metal fans which rotate at about 1000 rpm – that’s a phenomenal tip speed. These fans sit above the cane right after it’s been chopped, and their aim is to remove the leaf material. Unfortunately, a whole complex set of interactions conspire to result in a situation where if you try ‘too hard’ to remove the leaf material, you also end up losing about 20% of the cane you harvest through those fans – but it’s invisible. A billet that’s gone through an extractor fan ends up looking something like dessicated coconut – and there is no way of knowing the losses exist unless you do scientific trials to prove it.

I’d done the trials – all through North Queensland, in Papua New Guinea – all over the place. We had proved the losses existed, and the cost to the industry was in the billions of dollars per year, let alone the environmental impact. But because you can’t actually SEE the losses, you have a hard time convincing people that they actually exist. We got to the stage where my team and I had convinced the industry that there was a serious problem, and the next step was obviously “How do we stop it”. We knew that there was a ’sweet spot’ where those losses could be reduced to around 5% depending upon the way the harvester was operated. Since we didn’t have the ability to measure what was happening in the field on a real time basis, we had no choice but to use indirect measurements in the mill – like fibre, the sweetness of the cane etc, to try and infer what was happening in the field – to measure ‘quality’ of the job.

That became my focus, and I learnt along the way that when you’re trying to make a reward system based upon derived measures, the tiniest little change to your algorithm can have huge impacts upon the system you’re trying to model. Also, if you’re offering “rewards” based upon indirect measurements, you actually end up becoming an intrinsic part of the system you’re trying to model – in clearer terms, the whole system tends to change or adapt to maximize “profits”, which can play havoc with the “accuracy” of your algorithm.

It sounds completely unrelated, but that’s actually Google (and the spam struggle) in a nutshell. That’s one of the reasons I’m fascinated with it and feel at home here in the groups where occasionally we get questions that make me think quite deeply about the challenges Google must face – and we get the opportunity to debate our views This thread about pagerank where Craig and I duked it out with full respect for each others opinion is one example I can think of that I’ve enjoyed.

You studied Agriculture and set up a shop to make and sell backless lingerie. I bet all the guys in the groups have visited your full site (for SEO reasons, I’m sure ). How did that ever come about?

Ha – not only did I study Ag, but I managed to convince the government here to award me a scholarship to do a coursework Master’s degree in Computer and Comms engineering. I ended up with a few awards and an aggregate score of over 93% – without an undergrad engineering degree – I think that surprised everyone, even me . But I guess it’s only natural – most people do best when they’re doing something they love. I’ve always been fascinated with those applications where IT, Engineering and Science intersect and meet ‘the real world’ – that’s kind of Googly.

An example – I can remember the time when I was about 12 years old that I blew up the family commodore 64 trying to get it to drive solenoids to water the garden for Mum. I didn’t realise at the time that you need a transistor and a relay if you want to drive something hefty like a solenoid with a TTL output

But apart from being a bit of a terror, I’ve also always been a traveler and got along easily with folks. As such, when I was writing my Masters thesis, I figured I’d go stay with some mates overseas – I had a load of frequent flyer points I wanted to use, they all offered to put me up for free, so I figured it was an opportunity too good to miss. The only ‘gotcha’ was that I was to provide the beer – Norway was a hoot – my oh my – the Vikings ARE NOT dead!

I ended up (between parties) writing most of my Master’s degree tapping away on my laptop, perched on the edge of a fjord whilst staying with my Norwegian Marine Biologist friend in Northern Norway for a few months mid 2005 – the 24 hour sunlight was GREAT.

On the way back I dropped in to see my Indian mate in Tirupur (the south of India, in a state called Tamil Nadu) and ended up spending a few months there too. Tirupur is a big textile producing area, and I made friends with some of the big players there.

When I finally arrived back in Australia I mentioned that to my Brother in Law (a solicitor) and he said “well, I’ve got some clients that are looking to manufacture a neat new product they’ve developed” – so, before I knew it, I was off to India where I learnt all about ladies underwear, mobilon and thread density. We quickly got a few test shipments under our belt.

Upon returning my brother and I were asked if we’d like to get more deeply involved with the sale and promotion of the product – somehow I let myself be convinced. There began the roller coaster ride – I became manufacturer (traveled to China as well for that part several times), web developer, email wrangler, undy packer, book keeper, promoter and media spokesperson. It was crazy work and it was unpaid – the cost of manufacture and promotion sucked away much of my savings and any profit the product brought in before it ever had a chance to reach my pocket – although attending the modeling shoots was fun, and the POSSIBILITY that it might become something big was intoxicating!

But – a word from the wise – ever heard of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves? Those folk were in the rag trade Get involved at your peril.

One of your sites has recently had a strange kind of trouble with Google’s index, with all sorts of possible explanations but no resolution so far. For the average webmaster these kinds of situations are incomprehensible and terribly frustrating. What would you tell the webmaster when stuck in a rut like that – keep working on the problem or let it sit for a while?

First I’d ask them to think about whether they’d made any big changes to their site recently – to try and hone in on whether it might be something they’d caused themselves, rather than anything algorithmic.

Next, if I’d decided it might indeed be a penalty, I’d usually give them a copy of the webmaster guidelines and say “What do you think it might be?” – people usually have a fairly good idea about what they might have done wrong if a potential penalty is involved. I’d then ask them to write out a list of potential issues, and correct them + submit a reconsideration request and wait a month. If that didn’t work, time to put on the “mad scientist” hat and get methodical about things.

First I’d probably use Google to do a search for other people experiencing the problem. From there I’d approach these groups. If that drew blanks, I’d then start tweaking things with their site – but softly softly – one change at a time, waiting at least a week between changes so that I’d have a fair idea what ‘the cure’ was for future reference.

If that didn’t work I’d probably just start to assume that they were the victim of Google collateral damage – hell, we all know it happens, and I’d be submitting some attention grabbing posts to this group to try and ‘elevate it’ to the attention of Googlers, so that they could use their gadgetry to try and work out what the story was.

At that stage things are out of your hands, and you just hope that perhaps you’ve alerted Google to a potential “Googlebug” that might stop others from experiencing the same kinds of issues.

Assuming you had full access to Google’s servers and some web designers + programmers to help you, what would you change?

Hmmm.. looking back through my prep notes for my Google interview here…

I think I’d start with the problem of penalties. I’d be sitting down with the alg team and trying to thrash out a way that we could actually help those ‘ma and pa’ webmasters that have accidentally shot themselves in the foot – and to do so without giving the spammers a leg up.

I’d write out a list of things that we considered ‘top secret’ and another of those factors that were ‘out of the bag’, and I’d set about implementing changes to Google webmaster tools to alert folks to little things – like obviously hidden text – that might be resulting in a penalty and which they might not know about. Those kind of issues, to my mind anyway, are already well known amongst spammers and you can’t lose much by letting people know about them.

As for the more complex things, like, for example, keyword density (it’s a simple one, I know, but let’s start there) – you know, things that aren’t black or white – things where there were shades of grey, I’d be making tools to show them which side of the line they are tending towards – like a gauge, or traffic lights.

“We think your site is looking a little spammy – here’s an orange alert”.

Naturally, the alg team would then say to me “Well Matt, that’s all well and good, but if we start giving folks that kind of info, we’re essentially giving the spammers a great tool which they can use to test the limits of our alg, too”. I’d then say to them, well, why don’t we use cluster analysis to break sites down into 100 different categories of ’spamminess’ – the traffic lights would just show how spammy you are relative to others in your ’spamminess cluster’ – so really, if we give a green light to a known spammer, all we are telling him is that he’s kind of ok compared to the other spammers within his uber spammer group – but he needn’t know that

For the spammers, the lights system would achieve nothing. For the ma’s and pa’s that are relatively innocuous, having a red light could be a huge help – just knowing you have a penalty lets you know that it’s actually something you can track down and correct.

But I suspect the other engineers would raise a whole load of reasons that my approach wouldn’t work – but I love the dynamics of a group, and part of the enjoyment of working in one is often the synergy that you find when you’re sitting down with a whole bunch of folks with common interests and intellect thrashing out a new idea – that’s how a lump of coal turns into a diamond.

That would be a plum position to be in.

After that I’d probably start gravitating towards the alg design / testing side of things – as that’s something I’m fascinated with – setting up mega test networks and conducting sensitivity analysis and pre-testing of new algorithm ideas would be lots of fun and extraordinarily satisfying – I love taking good ideas and helping make them better.

I’ve also thought I’d like to make a tool that shows a graphical representation of the linking structure of a site – with things like nofollow, noindex as an overlay – that could be a great troubleshooting tool for lots of problems too.

But, to be honest, most of my programming experience is at the nuts and bolts level – A GUI to me is a command line and a prompt – I’ve got a lot of engineer in me. I’d be able to write the crawlers and mangle the database, but I’d have to leave the bells and whistles to someone else

You’ve done a lot of different things (so far, including an interview with Google). If you could rewind back to when you started studying, do you think you would do anything differently knowing what you know now (other than obviously buying some good stock)?

Cool! A rewind button!

Firstly, I wouldn’t have flown Qantas to my big interview – it was a debacle start to finish – they lost my bags (clothes, books, notes) my flights out (and back) were both delayed 12 hours or more and diverted because of tech probs – in short, I arrived sleep deprived and not feeling prepared, and I think I only hit my feet during the interview just after lunch. It was like an out-of-body experience.. grrr….

Secondly – I wouldn’t have studied Agriculture.

We had loads of fun out there, but my natural aptitudes are IT / Science / Engineering. My ag degree included a lot of that, but I tended to get let down by the sheer boredom of prac sessions that included watching grass grow – honestly.

I’m the kind of person that thrives on a challenge – so I did poorly at the “watching grass grow” practical subjects, and tended to dux the more academic subjects that others found a tad difficult – like advanced stats, biometry etc – I did the wrong degree for my skillset and, like it or not, time is a depreciating commodity.

I’m an extremely outdoors person, and I thought back then that if I studied IT or engineering I’d be stuck in front of a computer all day – but I now realize that that’s not really the case at all. Shucks, if I’m honest with myself, I LIKE spending time in front of the computer. I’ve come to realise that it’s the life / work balance that’s important – if you don’t have one, you tend to lose out on the other.

So with Ag, I just ended up naturally gravitating towards work that required me to be ’stuck’ in front of a computer all day anyway, but getting paid poorly for it, so the opportunities to go outside and do adventurous things in your spare time were limited.

I’ve had some massive, great interesting experiences with the route I chose back then, most of which I don’t regret, but if I’d done IT or Eng instead of Ag, I think I’d be in a better place, career wise. You mention “good stock” – it’s funny that, because luckily I realized early that this wasn’t what I wanted to do long term, and tended to invest my wages well – so I’ve managed to have a decent lifestyle during the recent ‘challenges’ which is LUCKY

Is there anything you’d like to add?

John Congrats on the new job, and I’m looking forward to achieving a dream like that myself soon, too – good on you mate!

Thank you very much for your time and the replies, Matt!

Nobody knows who you really are – Aaron Pratt goes so far as to say “Sebastian is either running from the law or a bookie, I never could get his name” . How would you introduce yourself to someone who doesn’t know you?

Howdy John, thanks for asking a dad working at home bookie running from the law for an interview. Actually, a few people do know who I am, for example my monsters, my dad, my laywer, my accountant and tax advisor, and last but not least all the nice folks at Google I had the pleasure to rescue my banned stuff chat with. *wink*

By the way, my real name is Sebastian(X). I’ve lost my surname in cyberspace. Shit happens. In fact it really doesn’t matter and if it would exist, it would be unpronounceable for the english tounge. It’s annoying enough that most folks call me Sebastion or Sebastien.

When I try to answer your questions honestly, would you be offended by natural choice language here and there? I do remember that I’ve promised to be nice, but hey, that’s an interview and not a Q&A in the Google Groups … please let me swear.

Feel at home, Sebastian

Thanks for your understanding John, and back to the opening question. How I’d introduce myself? Well, I don’t do it. Why the fuck should I? When someone contacts me I just ask how I can help. When s/he formulates an intelligent question s/he can judge me by the quality of my answer, vision, solution, or analysis. OTOH if the question tells me that I’m dealing with a fucking clueless moron, I don’t bother answering politely, hence an introduction is somewhat obsolete. Telling the truth can sound extremely brutal. Well, depending on the situation I can be diplomatic and friendly too, but I prefer to meet great minds.

Seriously, I’ve put up my business card on the Web. I frankly tell what I can do, suppressing stuff I can do but where I don’t think I’m an outstanding expert. For example I can code in several programming languages, but I don’t sell coding. Why? Because I’m not a coder. I’m an analyst, visionary, and a problem solver. I can design a simple solution for a complex problem, and then I work with different folks for each tier. I can do that although I’m not a genial UI programmer or Web designer, I don’t know everything about application servers and AJAX, or databases, Web services, XML’ish stuff and whatnot … but I learn fast and know enough of everything to make good decisions.

Looking through your site, you seem to have a wide range of IT-know-how. Why do you spend so much time on SEO, what makes it special in comparison to say database-design?

I couldn’t honestly offer SEO services when I’m clueless about databases, programming, software architectures, business processes, marketing, webmastering and whatnot. SEO is not all about writing great title tags and link building. When I optimize the crawlability of a large dynamic site for example, I do need to understand the IDE, scripts, data model etcetera as well as all aspects of the business plan. It makes no sense to optimize the Web frontend of a flawed business process, that won’t make the client happy on the long haul. And I’m not happy with well payed but hopeless jobs, so I don’t accept them. I can tag projects as helpless pretty fast, and if I’m told that hired guns don’t change the concepts but only implement them, I quit. Sometimes my zero-BS tolerance hurts in the wallet.

Probably it’s fun to write the book on database design, but then I could think of a few things more exciting than hanging out with DBAs and modelers during my whole career. Once I get something to work smoothly, it bores me and I look for a new challenge. Doing SEO and webmastering allows me exactly that, mastering new challenges every day. Not that I forget past projects. Recently I had to change a Cobol program I wrote decades ago. I was astonished that this beast was still running, and that I’m still capable to write spaghetti code like “go to a b c depending on i” in all uppercase without making use of caps-lock. BTW I’m missing the level 88 condition names …

What drives you to provide so much help – for free – in the Google Groups, to people who sometimes don’t even have time to say “thanks”?

I enjoy helping Webmasters, I pay back for the help I got as a noob, and it feeds my obsession about solving fresh problems. It’s a bit selfish too, because I’m educating myself by analyzing problems and developing solutions, or at least vague suggestions or ideas. Also, this group is simply addicting, and the gang of regulars rocks. Back then in the original sitemaps group there was potential for job acquisitions too, but that’s history unfortunately, probably because I edit out the verbal fondling (like dumbass, assclown, amoeba, and repetitive use of fuck in variations) nowadays, and don’t rant any more.

In your interview with Aaron Pratt you mention a background in adult websites and a “pretty dark grey” hat many years ago. That sounds interesting. Do you have an old “war story” you care to share with the readers? How were things on the web back then?

Well, as a porn peddler you kill for traffic, because you need that much of it to feed large networks of mini sites all selling up to the money makers like paysites you own, and to trade it. Actually I wasn’t that aggressive, because the search engines loved my stuff, not always voluntarily I admit. Most of the methods like spider traps we used back then don’t work anymore, and Matt’s gang took down these neat constructions within few months like a clockwork. Interestingly, I heard that Yahoo and MSN still send fair amounts of traffic to sites I gave away years ago because they were suffering from Google’s death penalty since 2001 or so. I fear there are no real war stories worth telling today. I wasn’t that bad really since I quickly realized that I can make XXX-bucks with whitehat SEO and purchased traffic too.

How were things, huh … Ok, here is a detail which sounds unbelievable today. Back then DMOZ was a porn traffic machine. See, you don’t buy it. It’s true however. AOL search was powered by the ODP and often updated. Adult Webmasters, err DMOZ editors, were awesome fast in adding submitted sites plus a few of their own. I submitted new sites daily and they immediately made money just from AOL traffic. Submissions to a few links lists and indexing by the crawling search engines created a stable traffic stream within 1-2 months. A crappy sales pitch leading to 30 pix in the members area did easily bring in thousands. Until Google overtook search and became way to picky.

What made you move away from the “dark side”?

That’s Matt’s fault. He taught me to think like a search engine engineer when evaluating and developing particular architectural respectively promotional aspects of site building and traffic management. It did pay on the long haul. Costs of development of fly-by-night and durable projects are comparable. Hence building somewhat future-proof stuff maximizes the profits. Also, I hate it to produce throw-away products. It’s much more fun to watch a baby growing up.

That does not mean that I ignore techniques beyond Google’s guidelines by the way. I consider burning a domain or tiny network for testing purposes educational, and there’s nothing wrong with making money with experiments. Playing by the rules means maxing out any given policy, so you’d better know todays thresholds and predict future changes accurately. Some of these experiments have a rather long life cycle. For example I still monitor a site running on autopilot since 2003 which lives off ‘user generated contents’ gathered from SERP referrers mashed up with, uh, other sources. It’s still under the radar because it deals mostly with long tail phrases and prunes milked out contents automatically.

As a parent, you have certainly seen that there are some experiences that a child has to go through alone in order to learn properly. If one of your children were to start making websites, which experiences would you want them to make for themselves?

Literally everything. I’d help with planning, coding and whatnot, but as a consultant, not as a coach. There is no better method as learning by doing, fucking up and retrying. I won’t allow copyright violations and stuff like that though, none of my monsters deserves that kind of a lesson and it’s easy to teach that in theory.

Assuming you were to teach your kids how to make websites that succeed in their market (perhaps you’re already doing that ) – would you start with teaching (X)HTML or marketing?

The first step is developing a solid business plan and funding it with pocket money or savings, so that’s lesson one. Monsters are marketing geniuses by themselves, highly skilled attention whores, IOW great baiters for all kind of stuff, so I skip lesson two (marketing) and let them experiment until they’re at least 15 or so. Lesson three is an ongoing process, I do markup and coding sessions with my eldest son and both of us enjoy it.

Turning the tables on Google, assume you had full access to their websites and some web designers + programmers to help you, what would you change?

That’s a tough question because I pretty much like Google’s clean and uncluttered pages, except the unreliable groups thingy in its current stage and a few Blogger weak points of course. One of the first things I’d do is lifting the consequences of an ongoing Google-Blogger conspiracy by adding a few links to Google’s blogroll. Next I’d catch the saboteur in the Blogger team to hammer the nofollow semantics into her or his brain. Then I’d look at the groups’ pipeline, because I can imagine that they have some pretty exciting things cooking in their labs whilst we pawn sacrifices suffer from their legacy hacks almost daily.

Of course way more interesting than plain Web design issues are things that matter. For example I’d like to spy for information on themes like the still imperfect REP standardization lacking major evolvements despite the newish X-Robots-Tags, or my pet peeve rel-nofollow. There’s a lot more exciting stuff I’d like to learn more about, and I could think of a few improvements of the Webmaster tools. Unfortunately, because I sold Google’s ranking algos to Ask they won’t let me in.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

While answering your questions the Berlin wall just turned 46 a few minutes ago. I wish that before I mutate to the old grumpy fart I am –mentally– already, I can change a few things to the better, for the sake of my monsters.

Thanks for your replies, Sebastian!

Thank you John

John, why do you spend so much time helping people who’s sites deserve to be penalized?

Google does a great job finding spamming attempts and deindexing / penalizing offending sites, however the algorithm doesn’t take into account the human element. Sometimes well intentioned honest webmasters stray into trouble, perhaps the rules have changed and they were busy working on their sites to notice, or even they just took some wrong advice they saw on another forum or blog. I’m not interested in helping spammers succeed but those who may have done something and not known any better. Google’s penalty system seems to treat everyone as criminals with no recourse to the law except through this Webmaster Help Group. There are so many requests that one has to pick and choose which ones to spend any real time on. I generally first make sure they are giving us the right information such as including the URL, some past history, what they’ve done or haven’t done, etc. I always look for some contriteness in their questions and actions. I try to avoid helping anyone that is trying to push the line to the brink of banning just for ranking purposes.

I realize the nearly impossible task of providing user support while at the same time fighting spam. It’s a thin line they have to walk between keeping spam out of the index while helping others create sites that are worthy of indexing. At some point though there is a time when evaluation algorithms have to stop and human perception takes over, and that’s the role I see GWHG taking. I see Google’s role as one who evaluates sites, my role is to not only evaluate the site in question but the webmaster.

As to Why I do it, well it’s fun seeing all the different sites and I always learn something every time I take an in depth look at something. I normally wouldn’t visit a lot of the sites because of my normal surfing behavior. I’ve developed many sites just based on an idea I got from visiting a niche I had never seen before.

What makes the Google Webmaster Help groups special? Why do you go there instead of one of the other major forums?

I’m a member of most of the major forums but rarely post on them. There are a few things I like about the GWHG over the main stream webmastering forums. #1 is that it’s a help group that attracts people who need help, sure you will learn a lot from the group but you will have to read a lot of posts to do it. It’s not a place to go to quickly find out how many characters to use in your TITLE for best rankings, though I’m sure its been discussed. Due to it’s help group status real live specific examples are discussed daily, it’s not rare to see a site get evaluations from dozens of people who all bring their own unique viewpoints to the discussion. SEO theory has it’s place but it doesn’t help the individual out who doesn’t want to become a professional site builder. Most SEO forums forget that the majority of the websites out there are not maintained by professional site builders but by people who just happen to use the web as another medium to operate their business on. There is nothing more frustrating to me than trying to follow a discussion without concrete examples, and some of the main webmaster forums out there don’t allow that. The 3rd reason on my list, but probably the highest ranking reason is the quality of members such as yourself that are constantly helping others. We’ve got people on this group that have answered thousands and thousands of questions helping untold thousands of other webmasters out there without any official public accolades. Sure some of the regulars may do a blog post here and there about the others, I even started a thread campaigning for links to the main helpers sites which got lambasted, but for the most part the real regulars contribute in ways that will never be compensated for. The quality of the regulars is beyond comparison, from marketing experience to incredible coding skills I always have someone I can ask one of my dumb questions. Perhaps down the line as this group matures Google will acknowledge the regulars in some public way and that would be great, but meanwhile I am comforted to know that everyone still contributes on a high level with no promise of the carrot or threat of the stick.

Assuming the Google Groups (and all your other forums) would shut down tomorrow, what would you do with the time that you spend there?

Besides starting my own one in about 3 minutes? For me webmaster help has always been a diversion, I haven’t pursued it professionally as I am too busy with my own endeavors. If I had no outlet for that I guess I’d blog more and maybe promote the blog so I get some readers.

The postings in the Google Groups bring up lots of peculiar items. Let’s assume you had a chance to meet each of the following people for a couple of hours to discuss the things that you’ve seen in the Groups. What subjects would you want to cover, what questions would you want to ask, what suggestions would you make?

- Matt Cutts or Adam Lasnik (take your pick or both):

I’m not sure how familiar Matt Cutts is with the goings on in the Help Group, so I don’t know if he’d even be interested in discussing it. Being that I’m not on any famous lists, don’t go to conferences, nor the webmaster of any very popular sites I doubt we’d have much common ground. I’d love to just meet him and try to have a conversation about the general condition of search, I’m not sure I could contribute much to the conversation but I would sure listen well. Then I’d ask for a link.

With Adam Lasnik I’d love to hear from him what direction he’d like someone like me who posts regularly to take the group in. Are there certain questions he wishes we’d leave alone or others where he thinks speculation is dangerous. If he was feeling overly generous that day I’d ask if there is anything I could look for “unofficially” in sites that on the surface don’t appear spammy but suffer a severe and sudden rankings drop. I wouldn’t expect to hear any of the secret sauce, but it would sure be great to have an area to look at. Perhaps its even something us mere mortals can’t see without special tools, and even that knowledge would help. There has to be some things that they’d like to tell the general public at times but surely can’t because if it came from an official Google source it would cause a stir, having an outsider say the same thing may help the individual asking the question but not cause it to be the subject of 3000 blog posts the next day. I’d also like to follow him around for a day to see the inner working of webmaster help support that he provides, having a better understanding of that may help me help others who are discouraged. Then I’d ask for a link.

- Larry Page or Sergey Brin (take your pick or both):

If I had an audience with either one I guess I’d take the opportunity to lobby for the ‘normal’ webmaster, not from the CEO of eBay or the writer of a blog with 100,000 subscribers perspective but from a normal person trying to fight it out from their basement on the computer with no budget. They are living the web developers dream by taking a concept and converting it into a thriving business and I’d really like to hear about that experience from their point of view. Then I’d ask for a link.

- Bill Gates:

Bill Gates would be very interesting to talk to, he’s kind of the grandfather of computing wealth and power now, but from what I’ve seen also the most normal person to have billions of dollars. I don’t think I could have an agenda with someone of his stature, I’d just sit back and listen. Then I’d ask for a link.

- A politician of your choice:

Politicians don’t impress me, I’m sorry. As I said before, I usually judge people on their intentions and it surely seems to me all politicians are looking for only one thing, power. They may have started out with good intentions when they ran for the school board 30 years ago, but by the time the make the public stage most have been jaded by success. It would have to be a setting with no cameras and no reporters so that they couldn’t gain any exposure from it, if then only then, my question would be “Do you really believe xxxx, or is just because a poll told you to believe it?”

If your children wanted to get started on making websites, what would the most important lesson(s) be that you would want to teach them?

Have an original idea. So much is discussed in webmaster circles about “duplicate content” or “original content” etc, but rarely does anyone talk about having the subject matter being original. I’ve seen way too many people wasting their efforts trying to write “original” content for their site when they should be working on making an original site. There are only so many ways you can talk about the Miami Hilton Hotel and original or not the market is saturated with content. What I see lacking in today’s webmaster discussions is new ideas, it just seems that too many want to take concepts that have already been done and add their own spin to it, expecting success. Unique content and better content is great but it’s not enough for you to build a wildly successful site when there are already popular ones that provide the same service. Is it unfair? Yes, but it’s also reality. There are probably thousands of people out there that can sing circles around the pop icons today, but the reality is that when one of those teen idols puts out a new album it will sell millions of copies, being better does not always promise success.

How did you get started with making websites?

My first site was a one page site I published on my dial-up ATT account in 1998. It was a page describing how I built a centrifugal dust separator for my table saw. I did some crude sketches, published some some tables I made in excel, and posted the link on a popular newsgroup I was a member of. I had a hit counter on it because that’s what you did in those days and had over 600 hits in the first day. I was hooked ever since. It’s something that has always registered with me, so much today is made about search engine positioning, and what is lost is creating content for an established audience. If you cannot find an online community that would be interested in what you’ve got to say, you’ll have a hard time getting searchers to find your site as well.

Let’s go visit the legendary deserted island. You have a laptop with solar power and a satellite internet link (books, what’s that?) that can give you read-only access to exactly one site on the internet. What site would that be and why?

http://www.google.com/reader/view/ so I can read my feeds. It’s how I know what’s happening in the online world.

On the same island, you suddenly have access to an empty web-hosting account. What would you do with it, what kind of site would you put online?

Probably help-me-get-off-this-island.com would be my first attempt, after that I’d make a bundle telling my story!

Turning the tables on Google, assume you had full access to their websites and some web designers + programmers to help you, what would you change?

What would I change about Google? That’s a great question and a blog post that’s been in my drafts for months now. I’ve got a bunch of specifics written down but I doubt it will ever be seen by anyone that can do anything about it. My biggest beef with Google has always been their mixed signals. I don’t want to sound like I’m down on Google as I’m not I’m a huge fan, but they change their message so often it makes me wonder how honest they are. For example the whole paid links debate, Adam Lasnik says that the general penalty is that link sellers will get their ability to pass PageRank removed, then in the guidelines the discuss the issue as if its the responsibility of the buyers to make sure the links are nofollowed. You can’t have it both ways and the mixed signal makes me question their motives. If Google was a person I would not be their friend as they seem to lack focus and shift their positions with the wind, which is generally a sign of not having conviction.

If I had control I’d also force them to finish the projects that they’ve started before starting new ones. Just as one example we’ve Google’s Webmaster’s Tools, which is a great product and revolutionary in the way they communicate information to the site owner. However it’s updated so infrequently and only shows actual statistics for quite popular sites that it fails to help those who need the help most. Rather than making calls for what features to add to it, I wish they’d fix the ones that they have. Multi-tasking is a great trait to have but getting things done is also important, I’d imagine that is just a symptom of the culture they try to breed at Google,inc.
I’d add a link for myself.

And to finish up, if you had the chance to rewind back to before the internet entered your life, would you get started with the web any differently?

I wish I would have spent more time on programming. I’m a degreed mechanical engineer, if I could go back I’d probably get a degree in computers instead.

Is there anything that you’d like to add?

Thanks for the opportunity to think about some of these things. I don’t speak at SEO conferences or get 800 comments on my blog a week so I think its a unique experience for your readers to hear the points of view of just average citizens. Good luck with the new blog, you’ve got a lot of loyal followers and thousands of people in debt to you for your help so I am sure it will be successful.

Thanks for answering, John!

So Christina, what drives you to post so much in the Google groups?

Hi John, hehe, glad to be here. This format looks interesting. [I sent her the questions in a shared Google Doc] So this is what you can do with this gadget….. Oh yes, interview. Hummm… did I really make that many posts? Oh, dear, I do tend to get carried away …

Why do I do it? Well it’s mainly because I have a compulsive nature to share what bits I know, on one hand, and on the other hand I seem to have grown into a troubleshooter. Which isn’t that much different from being a troublemaker LOL. Forums and groups like this are about solving problems, sharing knowledge, experience and helping each other. And mindless chit-chat too

It’s a cycle: you have a problem, you get help solving it, you discover and learn from that process, you have something you can share with others and help them solve their problems in turn, and on and on. If one learns, one has a moral duty to share and teach in turn. Well, at least in an ideal world. But there isn’t much point or fun in learning and keeping it all to oneself, is there?

I started off by asking my own newbie questions a while back, getting help from you and others who’ve got so much experience with search engines, servers, technical knowledge in general. Then it’s rather natural when I see questions on matters where I think I can help, to actually try to help. Most of this is repetitious in nature, been there, done that. Repeat, lather and rinse. Take 2 Aspirins and call me in the morning.

It feels good to participate in a discussion where eventually it is arrived at an answer at least, if not a solution.

But I’m afraid it’s in large part my compulsive forumer nature that drives it all LOL Yes, am a chatterbox given half a chance

Assuming the Google Groups (and all your other forums) would shut down tomorrow, what would you do with the time that you spend there?

Oy, bite your tongue, I think I’d be lost for a long while. Heck, I get jittery even when one of these babies is down, or when my Internet connection is giving me trouble, or god forbid, my computer crashes.

I suppose if that were like a permanent situation, I’d have to actually do things which I usually tend to put off. Like maybe start moving furniture around, clean closets, fix the garden… more domestic things. I might even cook a full meal once in a while …. Go on some new fitness craze maybe, like my taking up full contact karate and building quite an addiction to it some years back. Actually I should go back to that. Maybe I’d have to pick up some worthy neighborhood community project.

See, it all tends to gravitate to some kind of group environment. House and family and close friends are great, but insular in nature. I need to expand this circle to be part of a wider community.

The postings in the Google Groups bring up lots of peculiar items (that often leave me wondering, I’m sure you too). Let’s assume you had a chance to meet each of the following people for a couple of hours to discuss the things that you’ve seen in the Groups. What subjects would you want to cover, what questions would you want to ask, what suggestions would you make?

- Matt Cutts or Adam Lasnik (take your pick or both):
Oh, what I might like to ask these guys is how they dissociate their personas from the Big G, if they even actually manage to do it. As is typical with high profile individuals, they tend to get both the credit and the blame for whatever happens with the entity they symbolize – which is Google, the giant. They seem to get pummeled quite a bit, especially Matt, by many who are more irate than rational.

- Larry Page or Sergey Brin (take your pick or both):
Did you ever think this baby of yours was going to turn into such a cuddly monster? Become the thing so many love to hate … or hate to love?

- Sir Tim Berners-Lee:
Did you think this was going to exist in parallel to the real world and even take over? Did you ever dream of that possibility?

- A politician of your choice:
What choice? LOL – nah, I stay away from politicians. They are all mostly just flavor of the day.

Or rather, is the Queen of England a politician? If so, maybe she’d like to knight a few Googlers too

How do you handle conflicts in the Google Groups (or other forums), what methods do you use to refrain from escalating them?

Oh this one’s kind of hard. I’m rather hot blooded myself. It’s usually just one troublemaker (at a time), who manages to get many people riled. And then it’s a spitting match.

I first try to reason with the one who started it. When it becomes apparent there’s no way to bring reason out of a troll, if I am the moderator, it’s time to use my powers and ban the lout. If I am but a regular user, I’ll sometimes speak my mind and to heck with it. I know this won’t solve anything in getting rid of the troll, but at least it gets it off my chest. LOL, I’m no dainty, poised little lady, I can be a brutal hag. I’m built like an armadillo, nothing much pierces my armour.

A friend made me this signature gif for a forum I moderate, and I used it for a while, with great satisfaction:

When did you come up with your name “webado” and what does it signify to you?

Hehe, this came up as I was chatting with some online buddies several years ago. I didn’t have a domain yet, didn’t think I deserved one really. I had found free hosting here and there for my pet project du jour, which at that time was a site to host a songwriter’s chat room and some pages with mildly technical information of interest mainly to songwriters and musicians (with less technical knowledge than me). I had already built a site for a non profit organisation (www.rapsohd.org), one for an online friend from the songwriter’s forum I was participating in (www.nancy-heartmusic.com) and one for my musician daughter (www.melinas-music.com). They were all very primitive in design, but they were my first attempts and the best I knew how to do.

So chatting with some online friends one of them said I should get my own domain, so what to call it? A few notions got thrown around gyrating around “I Do Web”, “Web I Do” …I think they were more or less taken. My friends are southerners, “Web Ah Do” had the southern twang… “Web Ado” played on the notion of “much ado about nothing” so webado was born. At first it was a subdomain on a free space (Lycos and then Netfirms). Then I registered several versions of the domain (.com, .net, etc) and the rest is history. I have rebuilt the original sites at least a couple of times each over the years. I have some of the history of webado on my personal site which I originally made, www.webado.com and some blurb on how I got into webhosting as well on my biz site at www.webado.net. Yeah, I know, .com ought to be the biz domain, but what did I know when I started? It wasn’t going to be any biz, so I used the .com for my personal site. Oh well, one of these days I’ll probably rearrange the whole webado emporium, as I like to call it,into something more logical, if I don’t lose interest first, that is

Oh, even my cell phone identifies itself with the name Webado …. my laptop is called that too….. Surely that’s a kind of psychosis … transference or something Might need some therapy for it…. LOL

How did you get started with making websites?

I built my first ever website for a non profit organization RapSohD, dealing with talented teens in the performing arts. My daughter had been the winner of the 2001 RapSohD competition (she was crowned Miss RapSohD Talented Teen Canada 2001), their first year of operation actually. After the event I somehow got pulled into joining the organization as part of the board of directors, and by early the following year, in a meeting, I suggested the organization needed a website. So they said sure, great idea, who’s going to build us one? I had never built a website, was clueless, but my son, who was 11 at the time, had been playing around with some buddies of his, and I was so impressed and enthusiastic that I volunteered his services. He started building the site, got something up that was working (sort of), but lost interest after a while. I was committed. I needed to make good on the promise. So I jumped in. It was hard, he’d been using Notepad and written some god-awful code with it, with snippets from here and there, but which somehow seemed to work, as in a page would come up with colors, images and text and links to other pages, more or less as intended. I got dunked into it, with no prior knowledge, just using tips from www.htmlgoodies.com and whatever else I could find. I learned to view the source code of web pages I liked to see how they did this bit or that. I managed to build a site. I knew nothing of validation, optimization, other browsers, search engines. Didn’t care. It worked. It did the job for a couple of years. After that I made my daughter’s site. Then the songwriters chat site. Then mine. Yay, I was on a roll.

I started making some new friends, webmasters. I learned from them. I don’t know when exactly I started KNOWING how to build a webpage and then a site. It happened gradually. At one time I was a staunch opponent of those who kept putting down IE and pushing other browsers like Firefox – they were antisocial, anarchists. My sites didn’t work in Firefox pretty much at all. I hated Firefox. I hated those who kept pushing the W3C stuff. I hated the W3C. Gradually though an awakening happened. I don’t know just when I turned almost 180 degrees around. Almost, because I still don’t embrace the anti IE movement. I have all the major browsers, I test my sites in them all but I remain a loyal IE user, I cannot be anti IE. I’d love to see them all agree LOL

Let’s go visit the legendary deserted island. You have a laptop with solar power and a satellite internet link (books, what’s that?) that can give you read-only access to exactly one site on the Internet. What site would that be and why?

No fair. That sounds like my setup at work almost LOL. May I cheat? May I use a proxy site and access everything else? Oh, OK, I guess not.

Then I think I’d pick …. predictably… Google. I can get news, get my gmail (but can’t reply, doggone it!), search for anything my mind wants to know, maybe even find it among all the scraper site, see cached copies of all pages from all sites (haha, or almost all), all without leaving my island or googledom, given that I can’t access the individual sites themselves. I can read the groups (but not participate, bummer!). I can copy and rebuild my favorite sites on my laptop from cached pages (yeah, I had got Apache installed before getting stranded on the deserted island, lucky break) and then pretend I’m on the net. Build my own mini-www on my own laptop. Well of course the same thing could be done with Yahoo or others. I just kind of prefer Google, I’ve used it for years and am most comfortable with it. I might like to find Jeeves sometimes, that was search engine of choice way back when I first started. Until the girl at the library one day said… oh, just use Google…… 2 o’s and one g….

Ok, I hope they find me soon before I lose my mind…. I need interaction, I can’t just read and not respond. I can’t play solitaire or mine sweeper all by myself.

On the same island, you suddenly have access to an empty web-hosting account. What would you do with it, what kind of site would you put online?

Oh joy! I’d probably upload my mini www I just built and then set up my genealogical tree (so I don’t forget who I am and where I came from or why), then write my memoirs (before I forget all), keep a blog (so I don’t forget what I wanted to do in the first place). I’ll try to solve css riddles that have eluded me for a while. I’d compulsively build web pages to test every crazy design or scripting idea I get.

Turning the tables on Google, assume you had full access to their websites and some web designers + programmers to help you, what would you change?

Hmm, tough one. I’d probably push for eliminating or reducing irritants. Like the Group format – please get a real forum software LOL And keep it all on one blasted server

I’d try to solve the problems with the numerous DC’s being out of sync. Failing that, I’d want to see it mentioned clearly on search results where the results come from and that other DC’s are likely to show different results. I’d show the cache date for each page in the search results listings.

I’d like Webmaster Tools to offer the ultimate test of website health, covering all possible aspects, those we deal with all the time when we try to help people figure out what’s happened.

I’d like to see a version of Googlebot as a tool that we can all use so we know what to expect, kind of like Xenu, the w3c validators, the ex-Silktide/Sitescore (dead now), Spam Detector and Copyscape all rolled into one, and from Google’s point of view.

I’d want Webmaster Tools to say clearly: this site is penalized for breaking this and that rule or else relax, this site is not penalized, it is simply getting what it deserves for the quality it presents.

I want to see the demise of the toolbar PR, may it die a slow painful death for the pain it inflicts on misguided webmasters LOL

I know things are never black and white like that. But I am not sure I buy Google’s philosophy of not revealing exactly causes of penalties so as not to give tricksters more ammo. They will get it just the same. Like hackers and thieves who by their attempts at breaking through security barriers in fact drive the improvements in security, so do spammers and scammers drive the detection and prevention tools. It has always been a cat and mouse game and will be so forever more. You need to give the innocent at least as much leverage as what the perpetrators get anyway.

And to finish up, if you had the chance to rewind back to before the Internet entered your life, would you get started with the web any differently?

I feel compelled to quote the words of a song made popular by the great French songwriter Joe Dassin:

“Et si tu n’existais pas,
Dis-moi pourquoi j’existerais ?
Pour traîner dans un monde sans toi,
Sans espoir et sans regrets.
…
Et si tu n’existais pas,
Je ne serais qu’un point de plus
Dans ce monde qui vient et qui va,
Je me sentirais perdu,
J’aurais besoin de toi.”

For the non-French speakers, here’s my loose translation:

If you didn’t exist,
Tell me why should I exist?
To drag myself through a world without you,
Without hope and without regrets.

If you didn’t exist
I’d be but one more dot
In this world that comes and goes,
I’d be feeling lost,
I’d be in need of you.

Not to be too melodramatic, but I just can’t imagine me not being a part of the Internet world. LOL

But that’s not your question actually. Not going to change the part of the answer above, as it sums me up a fair bit.

Before I got sucked into the Internet world, I was rather oblivious of it. It was a tool, like email was, kind of went along for the ride with a PC, where the main players were word processor programs, spreadsheet programs and games of Sokoban and Tetris. It was like magazines and newspapers, you read them, skim through them and then toss them. I had given no thought to what made it tick, how anything was set up. It just was. Despite having been a computer programmer for years, I wasn’t savvy enough at the time to know how to search for anything on the web, so it was mostly a frustrating experience when I got my first Internet hookup at home. I wasn’t clear where my ISP’s homepage left and where the internet started. I hadn’t quite stumbled onto real search engines. I think my ISP was using something called Mamma or Dogpile … but it’s so long ago, I don’t remember too well.

Getting any of MY ideas or creations to be shown on web pages was inconceivable. Back up: having any ideas and creations to show on webpages was inconceivable. I didn’t understand what web pages were. They were screen-fulls of stuff. I was thinking in terms of ordinary programs and user regions, operating systems and programming languages.

This wasn’t even so long ago, about 8-9 years ago I think. A galaxy away.

Is there anything that you’d like to add?

Yes, thank you for letting me express myself this way. Not a day goes by without me discovering something new, learning or unlearning something.

I feel blessed to be able to move along with the times the way I do, even if I only pick and choose to what extent I want to go in this quest.

I feel blessed to have encountered so many interesting people from all over the world. The world is my oyster and it’s both small and huge and ever changing.

I am so lucky!

Thanks for answering, Christina!