14 DAY TRIAL // Matt Cutts' YouTube videos have been a great boon for webmasters, especially those with less experience. Videos made by the head of the webspam team, who also serves as Google's face in all under-the-hood matters related to search, have been short but helpful, but Google is announcing a new batch of them, some of which will be longer and more in-depth.
"Over the past couple of years, we’ve released over 375 videos on our YouTube channel, with the majority of them answering direct questions from webmasters," Google wrote.
The way it works is, webmasters post questions about things they're not clear on, usually very specific topics, and Matt Cutts creates a video answering the most common or interesting ones.
The videos rarely go beyond two minutes, since the subject is a narrow one. But Google will now start posting longer videos which explain more complex issues.
"Today, we’re starting to release a freshly baked batch of videos, and you might notice that some of these are a little different. Don’t worry, they still have Matt Cutts in a variety of colored shirts," Google announced.
"Instead of only focusing on quick answers to specific questions, we’ve created some longer videos which cover important webmaster-related topics," it added.
For example, one of the first new videos deals with 301 redirects. The question was whether there is a limit to how many redirects you can use. In the video, Matt Cutts explains that there is no limit for the number of pages from a website you can redirect from another.
Large websites can have thousands or a lot more pages and you need to be able to point users and the Google bot to their new location. However, there is a limit to the number of 'hops' you can use, Google stops after four or five redirects.