Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: 3월 2007

BlogHer 2007: Building your audience

금요일, 3월 30, 2007

BlogHer BusinessElise BauerWhy is search important for a business?Query stats pageHow do search engines index sites?Sitemap filecrawl errors reportsWhat is your site about?Option 1Option 2Why are links important?list of the linksanchor textThe key is compelling content

An update on spam reporting

수요일, 3월 28, 2007

Note: The information in this post may be outdated. See our latest post about reporting spam.Note: German blogto notify some webmasters in case of a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines (e.g. by using a "particular search engine friendly" software that generates doorways as an extra). No small number of these good-will emails to webmasters have been brought about by spam reports from our users.We are proud of our users who alert us to potential abuses for the sake of the whole internet community. We appreciate this even more, as PageRank™ (and thus Google search) is based on a democratic principle, i.e. a webmaster is giving other sites a "vote" of approval by linking to it.In 2007 as an extension and complement of this democratic principle, we want to further increase our users' awareness of webmaster practices that do or do not conform to Google's standards. Such informed users are then able to take counter-action against webspam by filing spam reports. By doing so a mutually beneficial process can be initiated. Ultimately, not only will all Google users benefit from the best possible search quality, but also will spammy webmasters realize that their attempts to unfairly manipulate their site's ranking will pay off less and less.Our spam report forms are provided in two different flavors: an authenticated form that requires registration in Webmaster Tools, and an unauthenticated form. Currently, we investigate every spam report from a registered user. Spam reports to the unauthenticated form are assessed in terms of impact, and a large fraction of those are reviewed as well.
So, the next time you can't help thinking that the ranking of a search result was not earned by virtue of its content and legitimate SEO, then it is the perfect moment for a spam report. Each of them can give us crucial information for the continual optimization of our search algorithms.
Interested in learning more? Then find below answers to the three most frequent questions.

FAQs concerning spam reports: Q: What happens to an authenticated spam report at Google?
A: An authenticated spam report is analyzed and then used for evaluating new spam-detecting algorithms, as well as to identify trends in webspam. Our goal is to detect all the sites engaging in similar manipulation attempts automatically in the future and to make sure our algorithms rank those sites appropriately. We don´t want to get into an inefficient game of cat and mouse with individual webmasters who have reached into the wrong bag of tricks. Q: Why are there sometimes no immediately noticeable consequences of a spam report?
A: Google is always seeking to improve its algorithms for countering webspam, but we also take action on individual spam reports. Sometimes that action will not be immediately visible to an outside user, so there is no need to submit a site multiple times in order for Google to evaluate a URL. There are different reasons that might account for a user´s false impression that a particular spam report went unnoticed. Here are a few of those reasons:

Sometimes, Google might already be handling the situation appropriately. For example, if you are reporting a site that seems to engage in excessive link exchanging, it could be the case that we are already discounting the weight of those unearned backlinks correctly, and the site is showing up for other reasons. Note that changes in how Google handles backlinks for a site are not immediately obvious to outside users. Or it may be the case that we already deal with a phenomenon such as keyword stuffing correctly in our scoring, and therefore we are not quite as concerned about something that might not look wonderful, but that isn't affecting rankings.

A complete exclusion from Google´s SERPs is only one possible consequence of a spam report. Google might also choose to give a site a "yellow card" so that the site can not be found in the index for a short time. However, if a webmaster ignores this signal, then a "red card" with a longer-lasting effect might follow. So it's possible that Google is already aware of an issue and communicating with the webmaster about that issue, or that we have taken action other than a removal on a spam report.

Sometimes, simple patience is the answer, because it takes time for algorithmic changes to be thoroughly checked out, or for the externally displayed PageRank to be updated.

It can also be the case that Google is working on solving the more general instance of an issue, and so we are reluctant to take action on an individual situation.

A spam report may also just have been considered unjustified. For example, this may be true for a report whose sole motivation appears to attempt to harm a direct competitor with a better ranking.

Q: Can a user expect to receive feedback for a spam report?
A: This is a common request, and we know that our users might like verification of the reported URLs or simple confirmation that the spam report had been taken care of. Given the choice how to spend our time, we have decided to invest our efforts into taking action on spam reports and improving our algorithms to be more robust. But we are open to consider how to scale communication with our users going forward.

Tips for Eastern European webmasters

월요일, 3월 26, 2007

In 2006 we ramped up on international webmaster issues and particularly tried to support Eastern Europe. We opened several offices in the region, improved our algorithms with respect to these languages, and localized many of our products. Should I find only one word to describe these markets, I would say they are diverse. Still, they have two things in common: their online markets are currently in a developing phase and a high number of webmasters and search engine optimizers work there in a variety of languages. We are aware that a certain amount of webspam is generated in this region and we would like to reinforce that we have been working hard to take action on it both algorithmically and manually. Since I have seen some common phenomena in a bunch of these markets, here are a couple of suggestions for Eastern European webmasters and SEOs:

Avoid link exchanges. If a fellow webmaster approaches you with some sketchy offer, just refuse. Instead, work on the content of your site. Once you have the quality content, you can use the buzzing blogger community and social web services in your language to get nice linkbaits. Creating good content for your language community will pay off. Help the high-quality people in your language community and they will re-power you.
Use regional and geographical domains in line with their purpose. First, a sidenote for the Western webmasters: some Eastern European countries like Poland and Russia have so-called regional or geographical domains. Imagine that all the states in the U.S. had their official second level domain and if you wanted to open your webshop delivering to Kentucky, you could do it cheap or for free on eg. ky.us. This could help Google serve geographically relevant search results. In case you wish to sell organic soaps to people in Szczecin, do open your webshop on szczecin.pl. If you are from Kalmykia and would like to show the world the beauty of your area, go ahead and set up your Kalmyki travel site on kalmykia.ru. If you like a region, support it by hosting your site on the related regional or geographical domain. Be aware that webspam on these regional domains violates the correct use of them and prevents the development of your country's web culture.
Say no to Cybersquats! Sneaky registering of strong online brands with Belarusian, Estonian or Slovak top level domains is just bad. While it will not particularly help you boost the ranking of your site, cybersquatting often has created disappointed users and legal actions as side effects.
Think long-term. You have your share of responsibility for the development of your market. Creating quality sites that target users who search for highly specific content in your particular language will help you get your market into a more mature status -- and mature markets mean mature publisher revenue too.

Site content and use of web catalogues

금요일, 3월 16, 2007

Google's webmaster guidelinesPolish discussion forumTreść oraz katalogi na serwisach internetowywytycznymi Google dla webmasterówpolską grupe dyskusyjnąPosted by Kaspar Szymanski, Search Quality

Get a more complete picture about how other sites link to you

목요일, 3월 15, 2007

Site 1 Site 2 Site 3 webmaster tools

individual links to pages of your site

Brand new German Webmaster Central Blog

수요일, 3월 14, 2007

For those German-speaking folks among our readers of this English Webmaster Central Blog we have exciting news: We have just launched the German Webmaster-Zentrale Blog! This is a tribute to the fact that the German-speaking webmaster community is our second biggest audience of this blog. The German Webmaster Blog will provide you with first-hand information tailored towards our German-speaking webmasters. The blog will contain a mix of German versions of postings from this blog as well as unique postings about market-specific issues.
So German speakers around the world check out this new resource for questions about indexing, ranking, quality guidelines for webmasters, and how to design websites with the user in mind. We'll also be participating in the German discussion forum, so head over there if you have questions or other things you'd like to talk about.
Don't speak German? We want to talk to webmasters all over the world, so stay tuned for more!

All about robots

화요일, 3월 06, 2007

Search engine robots, including our very own Googlebot, are incredibly polite. They work hard to respect your every wish regarding what pages they should and should not crawl. How can they tell the difference? You have to tell them, and you have to speak their language, which is an industry standard called the Robots Exclusion Protocol.

Dan Crow has written about this on the Google Blog recently, including an introduction to setting up your own rules for robots and a description of some of the more advanced options. His first two posts in the series are:
Controlling how search engines access and index your website
The Robots Exclusion Protocol
Stay tuned for the next installment.

While we're on the topic, I'd also like to point you to the robots section of our help center and our earlier posts on this topic:
Debugging Blocked URLs
All About Googlebot
Using a robots.txt File

Update: For more information, please see our robots.txt documentation.

Using the robots meta tag

월요일, 3월 05, 2007

Recently, Danny Sullivan brought up good questions about how search engines handle meta tags. Here are some answers about how we handle these tags at Google.

Multiple content values
We recommend that you place all content values in one meta tag. This keeps the meta tags easy to read and reduces the chance for conflicts. For instance:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

If the page contains multiple meta tags of the same type, we will aggregate the content values. For instance, we will interpret

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOFOLLOW">

The same way as:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

If content values conflict, we will use the most restrictive. So, if the page has these meta tags:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX">

We will obey the NOINDEX value.

Unnecessary content values
By default, Googlebot will index a page and follow links to it. So there's no need to tag pages with content values of INDEX or FOLLOW.

Directing a robots meta tag specifically at Googlebot
To provide instruction for all search engines, set the meta name to "ROBOTS". To provide instruction for only Googlebot, set the meta name to "GOOGLEBOT". If you want to provide different instructions for different search engines (for instance, if you want one search engine to index a page, but not another), it's best to use a specific meta tag for each search engine rather than use a generic robots meta tag combined with a specific one. You can find a list of bots at robotstxt.org.

Casing and spacing
Googlebot understands any combination of lowercase and uppercase. So each of these meta tags is interpreted in exactly the same way:

<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOODP">
<meta name="robots" content="noodp">
<meta name="Robots" content="NoOdp">

If you have multiple content values, you must place a comma between them, but it doesn't matter if you also include spaces. So the following meta tags are interpreted the same way:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW">

If you use both a robots.txt file and robots meta tags
If the robots.txt and meta tag instructions for a page conflict, Googlebot follows the most restrictive. More specifically:

If you block a page with robots.txt, Googlebot will never crawl the page and will never read any meta tags on the page.
If you allow a page with robots.txt but block it from being indexed using a meta tag, Googlebot will access the page, read the meta tag, and subsequently not index it.

Valid meta robots content values
Googlebot interprets the following robots meta tag values:

A word about content value "NONE"
As defined by robotstxt.org, the following direction means NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW.

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NONE">

However, some webmasters use this tag to indicate no robots restrictions and inadvertently block all search engines from their content.

Update: For more information, please see our robots meta tag documentation.

Using the site: command

금요일, 3월 02, 2007

site:googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com buffysite:www.google.comsite:google.com

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