Matt Cutts, head of web spam at search giant Google and a key figure in the SEO industry, has announced that he will be taking his longest ever break from the company.
A post from Cutts’ official blog states that he will be gone until at least October and intends to spend more time with his wife.
According to the entry, a lengthy holiday had been planned ever since he began his tenure at the company in January 2000.
“When I joined Google, my wife and I agreed that I would work for 4-5 years, and then she’d get to see more of me… And now, almost fifteen years later I’d like to be there for my wife more,” he wrote.
Immediate impact
Cutts entered Google’s web spam team in 2004 and went on to lead a number of key web spam and engineering initiatives in his first years in charge. These helped Google become not only the world’s most biggest search engine, but also one of the most innovative businesses around.
Now, after years of hard work in tackling web spam across the site, Cutts is preparing to bid his farewells to the empire he helped create.
Out of office
In a self-conducted Q&A section at the bottom of his blog, Cutts highlighted that he would not be checking his work email but said any search queries could be directed to his team via the Google Webmasters Twitter account.
He added that information found within Google’s Webmaster Academy, search engine optimisation starter guide as well as various forms of help documentation should help answer some of the more pressing queries that site owners may have about their rankings.
However, given his position as the go-to source for Google-related advice, members of the SEO community may be waiting for the company to announce a temporary successor.
In an attempt to quell the possible concern, Cutts stated that Google’s web spam team is “more than capable” of taking control in his absence, even joking that “they’re much better at spam fighting than I am”.