Can moving my website to "the cloud" harm my listings? Say my server’s in Germany and I move the website to Google’s App Engine or Amazon S3. Does this harm my listings for German results – or is it enough to set the "geographic target" in GWT to Germany?

Matt broke the question down into separate parts to answer them. First, he took on the part about moving a site to "the cloud" harming the users’ listings. His answer for this is basically that Google doesn’t even know if your site is in the cloud, so it can’t use that information to affect listings.

"We don’t know what is happening on the side of your web server. Your web server could be running Perl, PHP, Python, or Ruby on Rails," said Cutts. "All we know is what the web server returns. So your web server could be running code that would go talk to Amazon’s cloud or Appspot or anywhere else in the cloud, but we wouldn’t even know that. We don’t even know whether a page is dynamically created or statically created. All we know is what the web server sends back."

He says if your site is talking to the cloud behind the scenes, there is now way for any search engine or bot to know about that. Watch the video above to hear Matt’s explanation for the second part of the user’s question.

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Matt Cutts: The Hack That Wasn’t

I have to admit; I bought it hook, line and sinker. The timing of it seemed a little suspicious, but who’s to say that hackers weren’t trying to play a little April Fools prank of their own? It never crossed my mind that Matt would actually be behind the whole charade. The 302 redirects were wickedly masterful. Imagine what Matt could do if he focused all that energy on fighting spam instead of taking advantage of naïve journalists such as myself.

3D “Googles”: Don’t Hold Your Breath

As much as the idea of exploring the “metaverse” seemed oh so appealing, sniffing this one out as a hoax wasn’t all that difficult. Still, it was a valiant attempt at chicanery by the folks at Pandia, and for that I must give them props. Ian McKellan as the virtual librarian, though? Come on guys, clearly you should’ve chosen someone with more street cred and broader appeal – someone like our next candidate.

Ask Kevin: I Actually Hoped It Was True

It was brilliant. It was witty. It had that wonderful mélange of outlandishness and subtle hope that comprises the best of all April Fools endeavors. It’s the news item that you’re completely sure has no merit, but at the same time wish was true for the sheer comedic value it would represent to the entirety of the human race. And let’s be serious, would you rather be titled CEO of Ask or President of Keeping It Real?

It’s not even a contest.