Permanent redirects and datacenters: Forget them.

[kgun]

Note: This post relates to Google and not other search engines.

1. Preferred Domain Tool Launched.

You do not longer worry about 301 permanent redirects. Now sitemaps (as part of Google Webmaster Central) has a preferred domain name tool that does the job for you.

2. There are better ways spending your time than watching the datacenters.

You can not figure out what is happening during datapushing, load balancing and rotation.

[scanmonkey]

Why is Matt Cutts so concerned that webmasters are watching the data centers? I'm sure that Matt is a nice guy and everything and he has a lot of useful info on his blog. But you still have to take anything he says with a grain of salt. He's still a google employee and anything he says may have some spin to it.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by scanmonkey

Why is Matt Cutts so concerned that webmasters are watching the data centers? I'm sure that Matt is a nice guy and everything and he has a lot of useful info on his blog. But you still have to take anything he says with a grain of salt. He's still a google employee and anything he says may have some spin to it.

Yes, as you will see from the thread I posted before I read your post, I agree with you.

But the results you get by watching them can, according to him, be very misleading. Should you and I know this better than him?

I am more uncertain about what he is saying in the post in the above link.

[aaron2005]

The way I read Matt Cutts is that there is much better things to do than watch data centers, site operators and other stuff that in many cases is not current. If you also listen to the latest Matt Cutts Vanessa Fox podcast you see that Matt would like cached data more real time and even give us a window into their googlebot to show us how it sees our content.

If you are like me and follow all that Matt and Google says you will get a free education on how to succeed in todays engines, try not to fall prey to second hand information.

[greeneagle]

Nice post kgun! - From what I have seen lately (last month) The GOOG is giving crawl preference to registered Google Sitemapped Sites.

Ken

[aaron2005]

Nice post kgun! - From what I have seen lately (last month) The GOOG is giving crawl preference to registered Google Sitemapped Sites.

Ken

As they should.

[Webnauts]

Kgun, thanks for the excellent post. Very useful info.
But about Matt I am a bit sceptic. I saw all his videos, and there are a lot questions which he never gave an appropriate or clear answer.

Good that we SEOs can read his lips.

[Orion]

<<<< mounts soapbox >>>>

... FYI to Google ... we all have links out there from places other than your search engine!!!!

DEFINITELY use the google site maps, they work and do a good job of it...

However:

I have found up to 3 months later that links I've removed from my updated site map still in google (till I 301'd them) so everyone searching were getting 404 error pages.

I also want to stress that of the hundreds and thousands of links out there YOU nor I have the time to find out what pages in our site everyone out there links to...

SO...

don't forget to 301 redirect your pages when you remove them (if it's an area send it at least to your home page) or rename them.

AND

don't forget to update your google sitemaps and resubmit it.

<<<< steps down off his soapbox >>>>

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

But about Matt I am a bit sceptic. I saw all his videos, and there are a lot questions which he never gave an appropriate or clear answer.

Yes, you are correct. Google are now so big that it is impossible to have a complete overview.

Nevertheless:
Listen to this WebmasterRadio interview with Brett Tabke from WebMasterWorld, that knows Google better than most of us:

Date: 08/17/2006 Especially between 27 – 29 Minutes:

Look at Google how valuable they are. One wrong word by a low level engieneer could impact the stock of their price significantly. They got to be careful about what they say. There is so much they can’t say.

Google are media people. They have done a brilliant job at educating their people not to talk in public. They are outstanding, they are the best in business.

So if Matt Cutts are allowed to talk in public about Google, be sure that he is educated to do so.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Orion

I have found up to 3 months later that links I've removed from my updated site map still in google (till I 301'd them) so everyone searching were getting 404 error pages.

I also want to stress that of the hundreds and thousands of links out there YOU nor I have the time to find out what pages in our site everyone out there links to...

SO...

don't forget to 301 redirect your pages when you remove them (if it's an area send it at least to your home page) or rename them.

AND

don't forget to update your google sitemaps and resubmit it.

Of course you are correct.

1. My post was only relevant to Google.
2. It was only about canonical issues, WWW versus non WWW etc.

Conclusion:
If you only worry about canonical issues relevant to Google, you can forget the issues mentioned in point 2. above and concentrate on the preferred domain name in the Google webmaster Central. This should have been clear if you read the first link in my post, to repeat that link: Google Sitemaps Becomes Google Webmaster Central; Preferred Domain Tool Launched