Current Google status being answered in real time right now!
 

Check it - Googleguy (Google's SEO rep) is posting answers RIGHT NOW one after the other regarding Google's current data, updates, spam, etc.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/14216.htm

just keep refreshing the thread...

I get a 403 every time i try to visit webmasterworld for the last few days :(

Please summarize the thread here :)
Thnx

Don't you just love how vague some of the answers he posts are. I especially like the post though where he posts about getting unbanned from google, that's definitely a good sign to read about.

WG

wow very good thread.

Don't get me started! :1orglaugh

Hopefully we will be able to extract some kind of idea from all his answers :)

:thumbsup

He only answered a handful of question this time around - the most relevant and common question that affects this industry is this - I know people have wondered this forever:

Q: I have heard that it is always better to let Google FIND a site, rather than submit it. Does submitting a site directly to Google vs. letting Googlebot find it have any consequence in Google's algorithm?

A: The main difference is that when we find a site after crawling the web, we know that there?s at least some credible person on the web who is ?voting? for your site by linking to it. So we have a PageRank value for that page, even if the PageRank is very low. With a submitted page, we really don?t have any external verification that anyone but the submitter thinks the site is good.