Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Webmaster Tools keeps your "messages waiting"

Webmaster Central Blog

Official news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index

Webmaster Tools keeps your "messages waiting"

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Written by Jessica and Uli, Search Quality Team

We’re happy to announce that the Message Center supports a new “messages waiting” feature. Previously, it could only store penalty notifications for existing verified site owners (webmasters who had already verified their sites). However, the Message Center now has the ability to keep these waiting for future owners, i.e. those who haven’t previously registered with Google's Webmaster Tools.

Creating a new Webmaster Tools account and verifying your site gives you access to any message from Google concerning violations of our Webmaster Guidelines. Messages sent after the launch of this feature can now be retrieved for one year and will remain in your account until you choose to delete them.

Some questions you might be asking:

Q: What happens to old messages when a site changes ownership?
A: Also in the case of a change of ownership, new verified owners will be able to retrieve a message as noted above.

Q: If a site has more than one verified owner and one of them deletes a message, will it be deleted for all the other site owners as well?
A: No, each owner gets his or her own copy of the message when retrieving the message. Deleting one does not affect any past, current, or future message retrievals.

Just as before, if you've received a message alerting you to Webmaster Guidelines violations, you can make the necessary changes so that your site is in line with our guidelines. Then, sign in to Webmaster Tools and file a reconsideration request.