Matt Cutts on Google Ranking Blogs, Government and Education Sites

Philipp Lenssen over at Google Blogscoped has transcribed some of Matt Cutt's recent video answers to common search engine optimization questions. Thanks for doing that, Phillipp. Here is one question and answer I found particularly interesting:

Q: Does Google index or rank blog sites differently than regular websites?

A: That?��Ǩ�Ѣs a good question. Not really.

Makes sense to me. Is there a definitive correlation between the platform used to publish a site and the quality of the content? Does a person searching for an answer to a question care what platform was used to publish the answer they were looking for to the web? Should the how to's published by Matt Cutts on his blog be deducted two authority points because he happens to publish his site using a blogging platform? Of course not.

Cutts continued:

Somebody else asked about links from .gov?��Ǩ�Ѣs and .eu?��Ǩ�Ѣs, and whether links from two level deep .gov?��Ǩ�Ѣs and .eu?��Ǩ�Ѣs (like gov.pl), are worth the same as .gov. And the fact is, we don?��Ǩ�Ѣt really have much in the way to say, this is a link from the ODP, or from .gov, or .eu, to give that some sort of special boost. It?��Ǩ�Ѣs just those sites tend to have higher PageRank, because more people link to them (and reputable people link to them).

Makes sense too. Government sites don't rank artificially high because they happen to end in .gov or .edu. They rank high because a ton of people link to them. Which also explains why blogs tend to rank very well in search engines: a lot of people link to them. They also happen to be easily navigable by search engines.

Which begs the question: Why do people link to government sites, education sites, and blogs so often? Because they provide valuable content that's worth linking to. What are you doing on your site that is valuable enough for people to link to? Are you creating content that's so good that people will link to it without even being asked? If you manage to do that, search engine rankings tend to take care of them self.

By the way, if you'd like to see the video of Cutts' answer this particular question, click here. I've used Google's new Link within a Video feature to send you directly there. A feature, by the way, that I learned about on a blog. Hmmm, makes me wonder why Google Video's blog isn't a vlog.

I think that there is definitely a correlation of the content and the ranking of a blog. It makes sense to me.

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