Matt Cutts Live, YouTube Live Streaming and Google Correlate

So there I was playing Farmville/Gagaville while tweeting and not doing any work and I saw this tweet from Matt Cutts.

Well hey… that sounds interesting. So I Skyped my search nerds, Alex and Monica, and we followed along for the hour and a half information fire hose from Google’s famous employee.

So pretty much Matt just started a YouTube live video chat with everyone who wanted to join. In it he was his charming self and took questions via the live chat and the Twitter hashtag #askmatt.

YouTube Live Streaming

Here is a screen shot of the YouTube live chat with Matt Cutts:

This platform in itself was news… YouTube is apparently testing out and rolling out this live streaming. This could be great for live events, for webinars and e-learning. Matt didn’t have any real information on this but now we know it is coming down the pipeline.

People could ask questions live right on the right hand side. Some of the questions were great and his answers, in my opinion, were super helpful. Monica was really excited when he actually answered her question live.

Google Correlate

One of my favorite parts was the discussion about Google Correlate, which is now in Labs. What is does is takes other people’s searches around a topic and makes some educated guesses on other searches other people are looking for around that topic. This is experimental and based on patterns, no Google cannot read minds but it can sure help you take note of trends.

It also shows you where these searches are taking place geographically.

Apparently this whole idea started with the flu and all the different searches people enter in and around flu symptoms and the flu. There is a whole comic explaining how this got started.

For an test I added ‘hr software’ to Google Correlate and I got some good information on some other keywords like: employee management, employee performance, employee development, employee assessment, partner software, training management software etc.

This is not only kinda cool (and I love the map feature) but this is great for making some good decisions about keywords you are targeting, where to have your ads display, perhaps a tool for discovering new keywords.

I wish I was a faster typer and that there wasn’t a major bee incident during this broadcast so I could have gotten more of Matt’s great questions and answers. There was of course a lot of questions about spam and the Panda update. For me, the new YouTube live streaming and Google Correlate were two of the high points on this random hour and a half chat.

Did you tune in? What were some of your favorite takeaways?

I am not sure if this chat was recorded or will be archived but if it is I will be sure to update this post with the info.

5/25/2011 – Search Engine Land has a great recap of the Matt Cutts stream today: Google’s Matt Cutts Riffs On J.C. Penney, Panda Update & Other SEO Topics In Live Webchat

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