Matt Cutts Switches From Thesis To Genesis

Matt Cutts, the public figure for the Google Webspam team has switched his site from using the Thesis theme to Genesis. Matt has used Thesis on his blog since April 26, 2009. I tried to figure out a way to get in touch with Matt to find out why he made the switch but from the looks of things, there is no way to get in direct contact with him.

If we rewind the clocks back to July of 2010, a portion of the WordPress community was in the midst of one of the largest GPL debates in the history of WordPress between Matt Mullenweg and Chris Pearson. On July 20th, 2010 Matt Cutts appeared on the WordPress Podcast where he first mentioned the possibility of switching from Thesis to the default theme in WordPress but the switch was more a case of WordPress improving to the point of not needing Thesis versus whether it was violating the GPL or not.

For those that don’t think it’s news to see people like Matt Cutts switch to a different theme, consider the following text which shows up time and time again when searching Google for Thesis:

Thesis is such a popular theme that even Matt Cutts from Google uses it. You couldn’t ask for a better endorsement!

Well, that endorsement is now gone. Considering Matt was going to switch themes in 2010 because of the increase in features in WordPress and not because it had anything to do with the GPL leads me to believe that this most recent move didn’t have much to do with the license either. In fact, all of the SEO work that’s gone into the Genesis Theme Framework recently has probably perked Matt’s interest. This is speculative of course.

*June 27th Update*

@jm_cook @Skitzzo I bought Genesis. AM folks had sent over example themes years ago. I reimbursed (gift card) AM person who gave me advice.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 27, 2013

@ViperChill @Skitzzo @jm_cook I've been meaning to make the move for a while now. Blog got crufty enough that it spurred me to work on it.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 27, 2013

This also corresponds with the news I received that the theme team was not paid to create the theme.

Hat tip to Ben Cook who got Matt Cutts to respond to him on Twitter.