Agreed - perhaps he could have used more explicit language but, as you rightly said, I think he had answered that question already. I know he's public enemy #1 amongst some SEOs but people should stop being so rude to the guy!

I don't know if your comment is directed at me, but I don't feel I was rude to him at all. I do see a lot of hate for Cutts from SEOs, but they hate Google anyway. Cutts is just a face to Google that they can focus on.

Not you to be fair - but a fair few other people are.

"Suffice it to say that I would be very skeptical of anyone who claimed that more +1s led to a higher search ranking in Google's web results."

We can paraphrase that to: "Yes. I am saying that +1s make no difference in Google rankings."

The wonderful thing about the English language is that there are often many ways of saying the same thing.

But that is not saying the same thing. Your interpretation of it is "Yes. I am saying that +1s make no difference in Google rankings." but that is not what cutts said. His answer leaves it up to your interpretation. He could be saying "people who say +1s have an effect have no way of knowing that for sure" because we don't have access to their algorithms.

Perhaps I have missed something here, however does this mean that a Google+ post that has zero +1s will pass the same amount of link juice as one that has fifty +1s? I guess this would be dependent upon the author that posted it, so let's assume these two posts are both by you, Cyrus Shepard.