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Matt Cutts has left the country. Google didn’t transfer him, though, and he didn’t run away – Cutts only temporarily crossed the pond to drop in at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in London. Cutts actually gave the “keynote conversation,” which Chris Sherman moderated.

A full transcript is available at Search Engine Roundtable, courtesy of Liana Evans and Barry Schwartz. It’s about 2,000 words long, however, so I’ll only be hitting the conversation’s highlights.

A major highlight was that “Webmaster Central is coming out of beta – Vanessa going to post on this,” Cutts said. “And Google webmaster blog is going to turn on comments – first Google blog to do this.”

Sherman also asked Cutts, in terms of “crystal ball time, where do you see Google going in the next 3-5 years?”

“Fantastic question, in my own opinion – personalization, and localization,” the Googler answered. “Also if you have your data, you can store it at Google. You can almost start your own business of 5-10 business for free. Google’s ambition to organize the world’s information, this is really where it’s going.”

“Google desktop is also a huge benefit – no privacy issues,” Cutts continued. “Helps to find old searches – makes things more accessible.”

Cutts also reassured Sherman that Google is still not evil – and not overly buddy-buddy with any of the creepier aspects of our government. “There’s no need to worry about any black helicopters,” he said. And, when Sherman asked (presumably with a bit of humor) if Cutts is a “spook,” he answered with a simple “nope.”

On an even less serious matter, Cutts recently announced on his personal blog that he’d won the UK’s national lottery. I’d advise readers to “take” the post with a grain of salt.

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