Stephan Spencer reports that Matt Cutts has blessed us with several Google revelations (see below for Stephan’s details, and here for Stephanie Booth’s live-blog of Matt’s talk), one of which is that the Google algo will now recognize underscore-connected words in URLs as phrases. This is a big deal for many webmasters.

While happy for these revelations, my question, however, is this: why did Matt decide to dish all this hot Google stuff at a WordPress-focused conference, instead of at a more logical venue such as SMX Advanced in Seattle, just last month? Matt had ample speaking opps to reveal any/all of these things, but didn’t. I can’t imagine, however, a more relevant or appreciative audience than the SMX crowd.

Quotes from Stephan’s story:

One key development that Matt shared with the audience was that underscores in URLs are now (or at least very soon to be) treated as word separators by Google. That’s great news, because it historically hasn’t been that way. Back in 2005, Matt stated that Google did not view underscores in URLs as word separators. That meant that in a URL like http://www.mysite.com/iphone_review.html Googlebot couldn’t “see” the words iphone or review. Instead it read iphone_review as one word. I wouldn’t recommend targeting “iphone_review” as a keyword, as I doubt anyone will be including an underscore in their Google query.

So it used to be–until now–that any benefit that you would have gotten by having a keyword-rich URL was negated by the use of underscores separating those words. TypePad and Movable Type blogs were particularly affected by this, as by default, underscores were used instead of hyphens. This new change in the Google algorithm should make bloggers using the TypePad service or the Movable Type blog software (and anyone else using underscores in their URLs) very happy, as I anticipate their Google traffic will be going up.

A few other highlights from Matt’s talk that you may find interesting:

* Matt claims that Google treats URLs with a query string the same as static URLs. Caveat: as long as there are no more than two or three parameters in the URL, that is! Put another way, you won’t take a hit in your Google rankings if you have a question mark in your URL; just don’t have more than two or three equals signs in the URL.

* Matt stated that the number of slashes in your URL (i.e. the number of directories deep your page is) isn’t a factor in your Google rankings. He went on to say that although it doesn’t matter for Google, it is rumored to matter for Yahoo and MSN (Live Search). Matt addressed this because I specifically asked the question from the audience.

* According to Matt, the file extension in your URL won’t affect your rankings. So it’s inconsequential whether you use .php, .html, .htm, .asp, .aspx, .jsp etc. The one extension you should avoid for your Web documents? .exe.

* Matt stated it was myth that Google uses its status as a domain registrar to access domain registration data to use it as a ranking signal. According to Matt, being a registrar doesn’t grant one special access to other registrars’ customer data. Note that Matt didn’t state whether Google is or isn’t using WHOIS data as a signal. I believe they are.

* When asked about how to get one’s blog into Google News, Matt shared one of Google’s requirements for inclusion: the blog must have multiple authors. So those of you wanting your blog showing up in Google News results, I hope it’s a group blog!

[END]

It’s obviously not the second day of SMX Advanced - events rolled over me before I could upload my thoughts on the second day. By the end I was pretty exhausted, what with jet lag & staying up late for the Yahoo and Google Dance NW evening receptions - happy it was only a two-day conference. At the end, Danny had everyone pose for a goodbye picture - I somehow ended up in the first row (third from right, in white hat & blue shirt)!

Others have posted much (including a helpful 12-point summary), so I’ll just mention my defining moment of the second day. It was when Danny was talking about the impact of Google’s new Universal Search (US). There had been announcements about US a couple of weeks before the conference, but I was so busy I just made a mental note to research it after SMX completed.

Danny saved me - and probably many others - the trouble. He was all set with examples and a viewpoint. As he showed us one Google search after another (such as one on “shakira” that displayed clickable video images together with text-based results), I sat in amazement with one word forming in my mind: “uh-oh.” As Danny explained, this Universal Search is going to change - if not everything, at least a lot - in SEO. (Here’s a good summary of his discussion.)

Mike Grehan, who was in attendance, wrote on this last week. His analysis:

What does it mean for SEO professionals moving forward? It means we’ve finally reached point where better marketing counts — and not H1 tags. I want my company’s site pages to be found with links to audio/visual presentations and images and blogs and…well, everything that can provide the best user experience, ever.

I’ve already shown US results to clients who have had difficulty understanding why we’ve been encouraging them to embrace blogs and social-network media (the corporate gears grind slowly). Seeing the Google results right in front of their faces has, I think, been an “uh-oh” moment for them as well.

I’m blogging from the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) Advanced conference in Seattle - the inaugural event of a new series of search marketing-related conferences put on by Danny Sullivan’s new company. Besides that, it’s also supposed to be “advanced,” in that a lot of the intro topics covered at SES conferences aren’t being discussed.

Instead, there are two tracks, one for organic optimization, and the other for paid (PPC) search. So far there’s been lots of quizzing of Google’s SEO public face, Matt Cutts, on a variety of issues, as well as discussion of search personalization, gaining visibility through exploiting social networks, duplicate-content issues, and new developments in PPC networks such as Microsoft’s adCenter.

All the “celebrity” SEOers are in residence and on the speaking agenda, and there’s live-blogging and Flickr-posting underway. Though there haven’t been any great revelations so far, I have to admit it’s great to hear Matt Cutts, or Yahoo’s Tim Mayer, speak on the record about certain SEM issues, rather than weighing what all the industry blogs and forums are guessing about. Today’s social-marketing session was, by itself, worth coming to the conference.

As is typical in this industry, the networking and shop-talking opportunities are also, by themselves, worth the price of admission. Just got back to the hotel room from the evening Yahoo reception, at which I learned much from a couple of guys about domain-parking as a career strategy. Next up tonight, however, is the Google Dance reception, which should yield some quality schwag as well as more good discussions.