After being the face of Google to the search industry for as long as I can remember, it now appears Matt Cutts has left the search giant to become the Director of Search at Globe Runner.

Cutts, who took a break towards the end of 2014, was the Head of Web Spam at Google, having joined Google as a software engineer in 2000. Most of Cutts social profiles still say Head of Webspam so it’s unclear as to how official this is.

In his new role as Director of Globe Runner, Cutts will head up the agency’s Search Engine Optimisation and Paid Search team, with a focus on best practices whilst liaising with the content marketing team.

It appears that he’ll continue to maintain www.mattcutts.com.

This is a major coup for Globe Runner, who will not only benefit from the 15 years insider knowledge of this game keeper turned poacher and no doubt we’ll be hearing a lot more from Cutts on search in the near future as he will likely be able to continue his leading role in the search marketing community.

On the other hand, it does say that he will start work on 1st April – so there is every chance this is just an April fools joke gone out a bit early!

Read more http://globerunner.com/bio/matt-cutts/

#### UPDATE – Matt Cutts is not leaving Google! ####

This evening Matt Cutts has updated his Twitter account with a post as follows:

“Since two different people have emailed me about globerunner.com/globe-runner-w…

Someone is doing an early April Fool’s prank.”