Matt Cutts at Domain Roundtable 2008

[netmeg]

Here is a link to a rather rough summary of what Matt Cutts (Google Web Spam Guru) had to say at Domain Roundtable. Mind, it was being noted 'live' as the event occurred, so it hasn't been cleaned up for typos etc. But it does give some interesting insights as to how Google sees domain parking.

http://www.johnon.com/543/mattcutts-domainroundtable.html

 

[Varon]

Meg, this guy has no business being on Wikipedia. He works for the quality department in Google and gets mentioned in Wikipedia?? So now we have Google employees like web analysts and security experts getting hyped on Wikipedia. What a shame!

According to him GMHS.com should be converted to a full scale high school website and give users value while waiting to be sold. This guy needs to learn that parked domains are for resale in most cases. Its like land invested and lying vacant till some interested buyer comes across, buys it and creates a home out of it. At this rate its like Google telling people, if your land is barren with no built structure on it, we won't even include it in our land area census. Nobody wants Google to rank parked domains on the first page, but to be indexed fairly is part of being a responsible and socially accountable search engine. People need to know what exists on the internet and if Google decides to show the world what "it" deems is good and right for people to see, it isn't fulfilling its role as a complete information search engine. Its a micro googlistic view with serious monopolistic ramifications.

Well, dollars.com is a parked domain and I'm sure its owners are laughing at Matt Cutts BS. This domain fetched the owner 650K. It served its purpose without content. Thats what parked domains are for. Google should set an example and completely close down its feed for parked domains. That should make a huge difference. They don't like parked pages, but love showing their ads on parked domains. What kind of hypocrisy is this?

 

[netmeg]

I don't agree with you on several points, but I'm not going to argue about it, because what I think doesn't matter. I don't make the rules nor set policy.

Here's another write-up from SEO MOZ, as well as Matt's own blog entry

You might not like it, you might disagree with it, but ignore it at your peril. This is the way we are headed.

I particularly note this quote from the SEO MOZ interpretation of Matt's remarks, and I also note that he did not dispute it:

If a domain is parked, Google doesn't want it in the index.

and quoting John Andrews:

"What is Google's strategy? To provide their users with the best, most relevant results to their queries. If your business doesn't align with Google's strategy, then Google doesn't want to help you."