5 ms·

You know, sometimes it really makes me mad that it's difficult to get into contact with a person at Google for support of their products. But, I've got to hand

by jonpaul 16y ago

You know, sometimes it really makes me mad that it's difficult to get into contact with a person at Google for support of their products. But, I've got to hand it to them. They could have issued a non-personal public statement like most companies and signed it with "Google Search Team" But instead there is a personal touch. It's public statements like these that add just a bit of personal touch that makes people love them. My 2 cents. Entrepreneurs take note.

Matt_Cutts 16y ago
It's safe to say that many Googlers read what people write on the web and talk about it internally, even if we don't always respond. We're power users too, so if a search result bothers you, it almost certainly bothers us too. :)
- bradly 16y ago
  Matt, Can you speak about the possibility for personal domain blacklists for Google accounts? I know giving users the option to remove sites from their own search results is talked about a lot in these HN threads. Is there any talk internally about implementing something like this?
  - Matt_Cutts 16y ago
    We've definitely discussed this. Our policy in search quality is not to pre-announce things before they launch. If we offer an experiment along those lines, I'll be among the first to show up here and let people know about it. :)
    - eurotrash 16y ago
      Can you let me know as well
jsherry 16y ago
The reason you can't in contact with people at Google is because you're not the customer. Paying businesses are the customers. Not just trying to sound snarky - it's true.
- lftl 16y ago
  While you're right, I'll note that it isn't that easy to get in touch with a person at Google even if you are an actual paying customer.
- Matt_Cutts 16y ago
  No, the reason why it's difficult to contact people at Google is that 1 billion+ users visit us each week, and we only have ~20,000 Google employees. Even if every single employee did nothing but user support 24/7, each Google employee would need to do tech support for 50,000 users apiece. Likewise, there are 200,000,000+ domain names. Even if every single employee did nothing but webmaster support 24/7, each Google employee would need to do tech support for 10,000 domains apiece. The same argument goes for supporting hundreds of thousands of advertisers. The problem of user, customer, and advertiser support at web-wide levels is very hard. That's why we've looked for scalable solutions like blogging and videos. I've made 300+ videos that have gotten 3.5M views: http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp for example. There's no way I could talk to that many webmasters personally. So we haven't found a way to do 1:1 conversation for everyone that has a question about Google. That's not even raising the back-and-forth that some people want to have with Google. See http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=5d498a633ec07950&hl=en http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=... and http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?fid=21e50ed1333526fc00049a55576e8089&hl=en http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?fid=... to get a glimpse at the sort of prolonged conversations that people want to have with Google. In short: it's a hard problem.
  - antirez 16y ago
    Of course not everybody should be able to contact Google 1:1, but at least all the people that were subject to an action that required human intervention from Google. Example: I get my adsense account or site banner in a non automatic way since there is some problem with the content: so not into an automated way, but because somebody looked at my site. I should, in that case, have a chance to communicate with Google. This is inherently scalable as everything started with a 1:1 action.

by jonpaul 16y ago

Matt_Cutts 16y ago

It's safe to say that many Googlers read what people write on the web and talk about it internally, even if we don't always respond. We're power users too, so if a search result bothers you, it almost certainly bothers us too. :)

bradly 16y ago
Matt, Can you speak about the possibility for personal domain blacklists for Google accounts? I know giving users the option to remove sites from their own search results is talked about a lot in these HN threads. Is there any talk internally about implementing something like this?
- Matt_Cutts 16y ago
  We've definitely discussed this. Our policy in search quality is not to pre-announce things before they launch. If we offer an experiment along those lines, I'll be among the first to show up here and let people know about it. :)
  - eurotrash 16y ago
    Can you let me know as well

jsherry 16y ago

The reason you can't in contact with people at Google is because you're not the customer. Paying businesses are the customers. Not just trying to sound snarky - it's true.

lftl 16y ago
While you're right, I'll note that it isn't that easy to get in touch with a person at Google even if you are an actual paying customer.
Matt_Cutts 16y ago
No, the reason why it's difficult to contact people at Google is that 1 billion+ users visit us each week, and we only have ~20,000 Google employees. Even if every single employee did nothing but user support 24/7, each Google employee would need to do tech support for 50,000 users apiece. Likewise, there are 200,000,000+ domain names. Even if every single employee did nothing but webmaster support 24/7, each Google employee would need to do tech support for 10,000 domains apiece. The same argument goes for supporting hundreds of thousands of advertisers. The problem of user, customer, and advertiser support at web-wide levels is very hard. That's why we've looked for scalable solutions like blogging and videos. I've made 300+ videos that have gotten 3.5M views: http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp for example. There's no way I could talk to that many webmasters personally. So we haven't found a way to do 1:1 conversation for everyone that has a question about Google. That's not even raising the back-and-forth that some people want to have with Google. See http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=5d498a633ec07950&hl=en http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=... and http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?fid=21e50ed1333526fc00049a55576e8089&hl=en http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?fid=... to get a glimpse at the sort of prolonged conversations that people want to have with Google. In short: it's a hard problem.
- antirez 16y ago
  Of course not everybody should be able to contact Google 1:1, but at least all the people that were subject to an action that required human intervention from Google. Example: I get my adsense account or site banner in a non automatic way since there is some problem with the content: so not into an automated way, but because somebody looked at my site. I should, in that case, have a chance to communicate with Google. This is inherently scalable as everything started with a 1:1 action.