Matt Cutts is a peach! He really cares about the little guys!

I've been a retailer / developer / evangelist for the Yahoo! Store platform since 1997 (before it was Yahoo! Store).

Back in 2011, I was off the grid for a week chasing lizards in the jungles of Dominica. No mobile nor WIFI for a week was heavenly, but when we got back to the airport my phone started blowing up with texts and emails about this new Google update. PANDA!

A few retailers on the platform were getting hammered for thin content, and duplicate product content in their shopping feeds, but to add a SERIOUS wrinkle to the problem, there was a SERIOUS problem with (what I think were) platform-wide 301s.

25,000 domains were somehow getting confused with store.yahoo.net

The problem showed in Webmaster Tools where EVERY STORE showed overlapping backlinks, and some stores with identical page names would have snippets from other stores showing in the SERPS.

Retailers were FREAKING OUT!

The Yahoo! Store PM reached out to me hoping I could call someone at The Google. Fortunately, I kinda knew Matt from a few search shows, so I reached out.

Not only did he QUICKLY help diagnose the problem, he hooked my contact at Yahoo! with the Googler in charge of Webmaster tools and they hashed out a solution.

Retailers who were freaking out thinking the Yahoo! store.yahoo.net 301 hiccup was causing the results from Panda could sleep easier knowing anything PANDA related was with their content, not the platform.

Every other time I reached out on behalf of my retailer peeps, Matt was awesome about responding and helping us find a solution.

Many, many thanks to Mr. Matt Cutts!