I dunno when I first became aware of Matt - in the beginning, I mostly hung out on WebmasterWorld, and when he was there he wasn't necessarily using his own name (ork ork). Probably when I joined Twitter in 2008 and acquired a slightly higher industry profile - not for SEO, really, mostly for being funny. Anyway, we didn't cross paths all that much until one of the second or third iterations of Panda took out one of my fireworks sites. I was reasonably sure it was a false positive, because I have multiple sites for multiple states, and they're identical except that the events are specific to the state, and the other sites didn't have any traffic loss at all - quite the opposite. I was pretty vocal about my experiences and my theories (think of the worst Siamese cat you ever heard in your life) and eventually Matt asked me privately for details about why I thought I had a false positive. He told me flat out he wouldn't be 'fixing' anything - it was just feedback to give to the team. And my site did not immediately recover. But less than a year later, the site was back up and booming - just in time for my season. Was it because of Matt passing along my feedback? I dunno. Probably he doesn't know. But I like to think it was, because he was kind but honest about it all - and because he reached out, which he didn't have to do. And in the meantime, we'd gotten to be acquaintances on Twitter, discussing things like basketball (#GoBlue!) and cats and food and stuff. But not SEO - I kind of made a point of that. I didn't want to bug him about SEO anymore. I figured I'd had my chance. And I couldn't believe the slings and arrows he withstood as being sort of the 'face' of Google to site owners and the SEO industry. I'd have probably killed someone if I were in his shoes. That's why nobody ever puts me in positions like that.

I was very impressed when he took his new job with the government, but not surprised. That's Matt all over. And the way he writes about it - if I were younger and not disabled, I'd probably jump on that in a heartbeat. It sounds amazing.

You're an amazing unique person, Matt. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. (But Michigan TOTALLY shoulda beat Louisville in that 2013 game...)