Official Google Webmaster Central Blog [EN]: april 2008

Where in the world is your site?

woensdag, april 23, 2008

Posted by Ríona MacNamara, Webmaster Tools Team

The Set Geographic Target tool in Webmaster Tools lets you associate your site with a specific region. We've heard a lot of questions from webmasters about how to use the tool, and here Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa explains how it works and when to use it.

The http://www.google.ca/ example in the video is a little hard to see, so here's a screenshot:

Want to know more about setting a geographic target for your site? Check out our Help Center. And if you like this video, you can see more on our Webmaster Tools playlist on YouTube.

Retiring support for OAI-PMH in Sitemaps

woensdag, april 23, 2008

By John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google ZürichOpen Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata HarvestingXML SitemapGoogle discussion group for Sitemaps

Best practices when moving your site

woensdag, april 16, 2008

Posted by Ríona MacNamara, Webmaster Tools Team
Planning on moving your site to a new domain? Lots of webmasters find this a scary process. How do you do it without hurting your site's performance in Google search results?

Your aim is to make the transition invisible and seamless to the user, and to make sure that Google knows that your new pages should get the same quality signals as the pages on your own site. When you're moving your site, pesky 404 (File Not Found) errors can harm the user experience and negatively impact your site's performance in Google search results.Let's cover moving your site to a new domain (for instance, changing from www.example.com to www.example.org). This is different from moving to a new IP address; read this post for more information on that.Here are the main points:

Test the move process by moving the contents of one directory or subdomain first. Then use a 301 Redirect to permanently redirect those pages on your old site to your new site. This tells Google and other search engines that your site has permanently moved.

Once this is complete, check to see that the pages on your new site are appearing in Google's search results. When you're satisfied that the move is working correctly, you can move your entire site. Don't do a blanket redirect directing all traffic from your old site to your new home page. This will avoid 404 errors, but it's not a good user experience. A page-to-page redirect (where each page on the old site gets redirected to the corresponding page on the new site) is more work, but gives your users a consistent and transparent experience. If there won't be a 1:1 match between pages on your old and new site, try to make sure that every page on your old site is at least redirected to a new page with similar content.

If you're changing your domain because of site rebranding or redesign, you might want to think about doing this in two phases: first, move your site; and second, launch your redesign. This manages the amount of change your users see at any stage in the process, and can make the process seem smoother. Keeping the variables to a minimum also makes it easier to troubleshoot unexpected behavior.

Check both external and internal links to pages on your site. Ideally, you should contact the webmaster of each site that links to yours and ask them to update the links to point to the page on your new domain. If this isn't practical, make sure that all pages with incoming links are redirected to your new site. You should also check internal links within your old site, and update them to point to your new domain. Once your content is in place on your new server, use a link checker like Xenu to make sure you don't have broken legacy links on your site. This is especially important if your original content included absolute links (like www.example.com/cooking/recipes/chocolatecake.html) instead of relative links (like .../recipes/chocolatecake.html).

To prevent confusion, it's best to make sure you retain control of your old site domain for at least 180 days.

Add your new site to your Webmaster Tools account, and verify your ownership of it. Then create and submit a Sitemap listing the URLs on your new site. This tells Google that your content is now available on your new site, and that we should go and crawl it.

Finally, keep both your new and old site verified in Webmaster Tools, and review crawl errors regularly to make sure that the 301s from the old site are working properly, and that the new site isn't showing unwanted 404 errors.

We'll admit it, moving is never easy - but these steps should help ensure that none of your good web reputation falls off the truck in the process.

Webmaster tips for creating accessible, crawlable sites

maandag, april 14, 2008

Written by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist

Hubbell and I enjoying the day at our home in California. Please feel free to view my earlier post about accessibility for webmasters, as well as additional articles I've written for the Official Google blog.Accessible SearchEnsure that all critical content is reachableaccessreachableonclick<a href="#" onclick="javascript:void(...)">Product Catalog</a><a href="http://www.example.com/product-catalog.html">Product Catalog</a>Ensure that content is readable readableEnsure that content is available in reading orderlogicalSupplement all visual content--don't be afraid of redundancy!

Ensure that content communicated via images is available when those images are missing. This goes further than adding appropriate alt attributes to relevant images. Ensure that the text surrounding the image does an adequate job of setting the context for why the image is being used, as well as detailing the conclusions you expect a person seeing the image to draw. In short, if you want to make sure everyone knows it's a picture of a bridge, wrap that text around the image.

Add relevant summaries and captions to tables so that the reader can gain a high-level appreciation for the information being conveyed before delving into the details contained within.

Accompany visual animations such as data displays with a detailed textual summary.

Crawling through HTML forms

vrijdag, april 11, 2008

Written by Jayant Madhavan and Alon Halevy, Crawling and Indexing Teamever-friendly GooglebotInvisible Web

My site's been hacked - now what?

maandag, april 07, 2008

Written by Nathan Johns, Search Quality TeamGoogle Webmaster ToolsQuick Security ChecklistStopBadwareTrends in Badware 2007this postGoogle Online Security BlogThe Ghost in the Browsertechnical reportGetting your site off-line

Take your site off-line temporarily, at least until you know you've fixed things.*

If you can't take it off-line, return a 503 status code to prevent it from being crawled.

In the Webmaster Tools, use the URL removal tool to remove any hacked pages or URLs from search results that may have been added. This will prevent the hacked pages from being served to users.

Damage Assessment

It's a good idea to figure out exactly what the hacker was after.

Were they looking for sensitive information?
Did they want to gain control of your site for other purposes?

Look for any modified or uploaded files on your web server.

Check your server logs for any suspicious activity, such as failed login attempts, command history (especially as root), unknown user accounts, etc.

Determine the scope of the problem—do you have other sites that may be affected?

Recovery

The absolute best thing to do here is a complete reinstall of the OS from a trusted source. It's the only way to be completely sure you've removed everything the hacker may have done.*

After a fresh re-installation, use the latest backup you have to restore your site. Don't forget to make sure the backup is clean and free of hacked content too.*

Patch any software packages to the latest version. This includes things such as weblog platforms, content management systems, or any other type of third-party software installed.

Change your passwords - https://www.google.com/accounts/PasswordHelp

Restoring your online presence

Get your system back online.

If you're a Webmaster Tools user, sign in to your account

If your site was flagged as having malware, request a review to determine whether your site is clean
If you used the URL removal tool on URLs which you do want in the index, request that Webmaster Tools re-include your content by revoking the removal.

Keep an eye on things, as the hacker may try to return.

Webmaster Help Center guidelines

If your site's been flagged by Google as serving malware, we'll alert you when you visit Webmaster Tools.

Don't forget about the Google Webmaster Help Group; it's full of extremely knowledgeable users, and Googlers as well. For a nice, on-topic example, check out this thread. There's also a Stop Badware group.

Matt Cutts recently posted Three tips to protect your WordPress installation on his blog, and there are lots of great comments below the post as well.

Improvements to iGoogle Gadgets for Webmaster Tools

woensdag, april 02, 2008

Update: The described feature is no longer available.launched Webmaster Tools iGoogle GadgetsIf you do want 4 columns, remember that you can choose "edit this tab" yourself to select an alternate layout. Update: The 4-column layout is no longer available in iGoogle.let us know

Webmaster Central Blog

Where in the world is your site?

Retiring support for OAI-PMH in Sitemaps

Best practices when moving your site

Webmaster tips for creating accessible, crawlable sites

Crawling through HTML forms

My site's been hacked - now what?

Improvements to iGoogle Gadgets for Webmaster Tools

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