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29 items tagged "communication and and"

Related tags: feedback [+], services, products, indexing, crawling

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

• 

  "It's on Google! YAY!" - Getting webmaster help in our forum

  Posted: December 28th, 2010, 6:27am CET by John Mueller

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Webmaster level: all
  
  It's been a bit more than five years now that our Webmaster Help Forum has been up and running, helping webmasters around the world. Over the years, over tens of thousands of users have discussed various topics in well over 100,000 threads, helping each other to improve their websites and to solve a variety of issues that web publishers are confronted with. Among those users is a group that we call the "Bionic Posters," users who have proven to be consistently helpful and knowledgeable, selflessly helping others to tackle seemingly insurmountable problems.
  
  It's great to have such an awesome community -- but thanks is best said by those who are helped. Here is some of the feedback that we collected this year:
  

  • "Thank you for the time you have spent helping me. It is genuinely appreciated."
  • "Thank you to everyone who helped with my problem! My creaky old 1996 era website is all cleaned up and doing just fine now! Good Guys Rule!"
  • "WOW!!!!!!!! Thank you so much for your help! I was reluctant to post because I thought you guys might think my site is too small, too insignificant, etc. Thanks so much! To me, it's a BIG deal!"
  • "My traffic has doubled and I am now either top or close to the top in search terms"
  • "Thanks. Hopefully my late night paid off then, all the help and information has been great!!!!!!!"
  • "Wow Webado Thank You Again.. You Really Know Your stuff! (…) You Are a True professional and Seriously The Only Person That Could Even Figure This out. I even Spoke to Other Top Specialists and YOU were the Only one who told me what to do and what was wrong."
  • "You are AMAZING! Thank you so much!"
  • "Finally, thanks so much for your concern and prompt reply, Squibble. Can't imagine a person would deligated his efforts to someones you don't even know and met. (…) Thanks for your help!! It means everything to me!"
  • "Wow thanks so much! I have just been to the hot springs in Banos Ecuador, the volcano is rumbling and the town has evacuated but I am still here talking Apache, now that is dedication, I will test your helpfulness out 2moro! Thanks so much!!!"
  • "THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU! YOU ARE SOOOO AMAZING! MY BLOG IS GONE FROM GOOGLE AND ALL THE OLD POSTS ASSOCIATED WITH THAT TOO! THANK YOU! I LOVE YOU!"
  • "It worked! Thank you very much for your help Cristina :)"
  • "I could NEVER have seen what's possible without this forum. I am so grateful."
  • "Thank you so much for your detailed response to my questions. In 10 years of me having a website, no one has explained these concepts better to me than you did."
  • "IT WORKED!!! Thank you so much for saving me the grief and embarrassment of this problem. I truly appreciate both your knowledge and guidance."
  • "Thank you so much for such a detailed answer and putting into terms I can easily understand. (…) Where shall I send the batch of brownies?"
  • "Thank you so much Squibble you are a hero. I have done what it says and i will check to see if i appear in google! Thanks again!"
  • "you guys are amazing! thank you so much redleg! (…) and if you happen to ever be in san carlos give me a shout - you deserve at least a beer and a lunch! "
  • "Thank you Squibble, Vanessa, Cristina, and Ishigaki for weighing in on this and helping me. I hope I can pay it forward one day."
  • "Great info Guys. I really appreciate it. It was awesome of y'all to help me out. I really appreciate it. Thank you."
  • "Your amazing :-) i love you lol xx im sorted now thanks and never in a million years would i have found that out!"
  • "THANK YOU! I love Google and appreciate that they have these safety precautions in place for those nasty hackets - especially when we can fix the problem! Thanks so much for your help. Whew."
  • "Thank you very much, Robbo! With a little tweaking it worked perfectly!"
  • "yay!!! I think it finally went through - THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!"

  
  If you have a question that you would like to ask, a problem that you need help with, we'd love to see you in the forums! We just ask that you please take the time to read through our frequently asked questions, and search the forum before posting. Chances are high that a question like yours has already been answered. Tell us a little bit about yourself and then join us to learn more and help others!
  
  Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst
• 

  Improving our help content: stocking stuffers in our Help Center

  Posted: December 23rd, 2010, 10:21am CET by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Webmaster Level: All
  We provide lots of information for webmasters across many different channels — you can stay up to date with the latest features here on our blog, browse articles in our Help Center, have discussions in our forums (in 17 languages!), watch videos on our YouTube channel, or even read in-depth interviews (in English, Portuguese, and other languages).
  There’s no shortage of useful information, but sometimes the relevant bits may be a bit difficult to locate, especially for novice webmasters. We see the same questions popping up over and over again, so we’ve tried to make our most frequently searched information as accessible and visible as possible: We analysed the questions asked over the past year and a half and identified the issues you are most interested in. We then picked out the relevant bits from across our different resources and collected the answers to those questions in one new convenient FAQ page in our Help Center (available in 20 languages).
  We also frequently get questions on how to get in touch with us, so we’ve put together all the different ways you can: ...tell us about a page you want to remove from our search results; ...tell us about spam you found; ...let us know when you’ve fixed issues on your website;...and many more! All of these contact channels are now listed conveniently in one article with direct links to the relevant forms: Webmaster help and contacts (available from the homepage of our Help Center, also in 20 languages).
  Now isn’t that a nice stocking stuffer (-:? Happy webmastering in 2011, and keep the feedback coming!
  
  Posted by Mariya Moeva, Search Quality Team, Dublin
• 

  A Chrome extension for reporting webspam

  Posted: November 8th, 2010, 4:08pm CET by Maile Ohye

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Webmaster Level: All
  
  At Google, we continually strive to improve our algorithms to keep search results relevant and clean. You have been supporting us on this mission by sending spam reports for websites that violate our Webmaster Guidelines, using the spam report form in Google Webmaster Tools. While you might not see changes right away, we take your reports seriously and use them to fine-tune our algorithms -- the feedback is much appreciated and helps us to protect the integrity of our search results. We also take manual action on many of these spam reports. A recent blog post covers more information on how to identify webspam.
  
  For those of you who regularly report spam, or would like to do so, we’ve now published a Chrome extension for reporting spam that makes the process more convenient and simple. The extension adds “Report spam” links to search results and your Web History, taking you directly to the spam report form and autocompleting some form fields for you. With this extension, Google’s spam report form is always just one click away.
  
  The Google Webspam Report Chrome extension provides further tools to help you quickly fill out a spam report:

  • a browser button to report the currently viewed page
  • an option to retrieve recent Google searches from your Chrome history
  • an option to retrieve recently visited URLs from your Chrome history

  As before, you need to be logged into your Google Account to report spam. You can find a more detailed walkthrough of the use cases and features in this presentation and on the Chrome Extensions Gallery page, where you can also provide feedback and suggestions. We hope that you find this extension useful and that you continue to help us fight spam.
  
  The extension is available in 16 languages. If your Chrome browser is set to a language supported by the extension, it will automatically use the localized version, otherwise defaulting to English.
  
  Note: We care about your privacy. The Google Webspam Report Chrome extension allows you to access your personal Chrome history for the purpose of reporting spam, but does not send data retrieved from it to our servers. The source code of the extension has been published under an open source license.
  
  Posted by Manuel Holtz, Support Engineer, Search Quality team
• 

  How to help Google identify web spam

  Posted: November 4th, 2010, 3:00pm CET by Maile Ohye

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Webmaster level: All
  
  Everyone who uses the web knows how frustrating it is to land on a page that sounds promising in the search results but ends up being useless when you visit it. We work hard to make sure Google’s algorithms catch as much as possible, but sometimes spammy sites still make it into search results. We appreciate the numerous spam reports sent in by users like you who find these issues; the reports help us improve our search results and make sure that great content is treated accordingly. Good spam reports are important to us. Here’s how to maximize the impact of any spam reports you submit:
  
  Why report spam to Google?
  
  Google’s search quality team uses spam reports as a basis for further improving the quality of the results that we show you, to provide a level playing field for webmasters, and to help with our scalable spam fighting efforts. With the release of new tools like our Chrome extension to report spam, we’ve seen people filing more spam reports and we have to allocate appropriate resources to the spam reports that are mostly likely to be useful.
  
  Spam reports are prioritized by looking at how much visibility a potentially spammy site has in our search results, in order to help us focus on high-impact sites in a timely manner. For instance, we’re likely to prioritize the investigation of a site that regularly ranks on the first or second page over that of a site that only gets a few search impressions per month. A spam report for a page that is almost never seen by users is less likely to be reviewed compared to higher-impact pages or sites. We generally use spam reports to help improve our algorithms so that we can not only recognize and handle this particular site, but also cover any similar sites. In a few cases, we may additionally choose to immediately remove or otherwise take action on a site.
  
  Which sites should I report?
  
  We love seeing reports about spammy sites that our algorithms have missed. That said, it’s a poor use of your time to report sites that are not spammy. Sites submitted through the spam report form are reviewed for spam content only. Sites that you think should be tackled for other reasons should be submitted to us through the appropriate channels: for example, for those that contain content which you have removed, use our URL removal tools; for sites with malware, use the malware report form; for paid links that you find on sites, use the paid links reporting form. If you want to report spammy links for a page, make sure that you read how to report linkspam. If you have a complaint because someone is copying your content, we have a different copyright process--see our official documentation pages for more info. There’s generally no need to report sites with technical problems or parked domains because these are typically handled automatically.
  
  The same applies to redirecting legitimate sites from one top level domain to another, e.g. example.de redirecting to example.com/de. As long as the content presented is not spammy, the technique of redirecting one domain to another does not automatically violate the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
  
  
  If you happen to come across a gibberish site similar to this one, it’s most likely spam.
  The best way to submit a compelling spam report is to take a good look at the website in question and compare it against the Google Webmaster Guidelines. For instance, these would be good reasons to report a site through the spam report form:

  • the cached version contains significantly different (often keyword-rich) content from the live version
  • you’re redirected to a completely different domain with off-topic, commercial content
  • the site is filled with auto-generated or keyword-stuffed content that seems to make no sense

  These are just a few examples of techniques that might be potentially spammy, and which we would appreciate seeing in the form of a spam report. When in doubt, please feel free to discuss your concerns on the Help Forum with other users and Google guides.
  
  What should I include in a spam report?
  
  Some spam reports are easier to understand than others; having a clear and easy-to-understand report makes it much easier for us to analyze the issue and take appropriate actions. Here are some things to keep in mind when submitting the spam report:

  • Submit the URLs of the pages where you see spam (not just the domain name). This makes it easy for us to verify the problem on those specific pages.
  • Try to specify the issue as clearly as possible using the checkboxes. Don’t just check every single box--such reports are less likely to be reviewed.
  • If only a part of the page uses spammy techniques, for example if it uses cloaking or has hidden text on an otherwise good page, provide a short explanation on how to look for the spam you’re seeing. If you’re reporting a site for spammy backlinks rather than on-page content, mention that.

  By following these guidelines, your spam reports will be reproducible and clear, making them easier to analyze on our side.
  
  What happens next?
  
  After reviewing the feedback from these reports (we want to confirm that the reported sites are actually spammy, not just sites that someone didn’t like), it may take a bit of time before we update our algorithms and a change is visible in the search results. Keep in mind that sometimes our algorithms may already be treating those techniques appropriately; for instance, perhaps we’re already ignoring all the hidden text or the exchanged links that you have reported. Submitting the same spam report multiple times is not necessary. Rest assured that we actively review spam reports and take appropriate actions, even if the changes are not immediately visible to you.
  
  With your help, we hope that we can improve the quality of and fairness in our search results for everyone! Thank you for continuing to submit spam reports and feel free to post here or in our Help Forum should you have any questions.
  
  Written by Kaspar Szymanski, Search Quality Strategist & John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst
• 

  Grab bag videos are back!

  Posted: June 1st, 2010, 2:36pm CEST by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  We’re kicking off June with the start of a new round of webmaster Q&A on the Webmaster Central YouTube channel. You submitted and voted on questions for Matt Cutts to answer, and Matt sat in the studio for a full day sharing advice for webmasters.
  For those of you who watch each video (and who doesn’t?), we’ve worked hard to keep things interesting. Not only did Matt wear different colored shirts, we changed the backgrounds as well! Just don’t submit any screen grabs to We Have Lasers, okay?
  To get you started, here’s the first video, which addresses a question about geographic targeting in Webmaster Tools:
  We’ll be posting links to new videos as they’re posted on our Twitter account, so follow us there or subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified of new answers.
  Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team
• 

  Call for webspam reports in Thai, Indonesian, Romanian, Czech and Farsi

  Posted: May 5th, 2010, 1:12pm CEST by Maile Ohye

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Webmaster Level: All
  
  Update on May 19, 2010: We have several translated versions of this post! If you're more comfortable reading Thai, Indonesian, Romanian, Czech, or Farsi, the links above will take you to your preferred version. Thanks again for your help.
  
  We pay attention to dozens of different languages in our spam fighting, but sometimes we really want to drill down and concentrate on a small number of languages. We’d like to ask for your help to identify webspam in Thai, Indonesian, Romanian, Czech and Farsi. If you know of sites that violate our webmaster guidelines in these languages, please send us a spam report. We use this information not only to look at the sites listed in reports, but also to improve our effectiveness in the rest of your language on the web.
  
  Thanks in advance for any data you send our way about spam in these languages. Of course, you’re always welcome to submit spam reports in other languages too!
  
  Written by Viktor Nebehaj and Matt Cutts, Search Quality Team
• 

  Google's SEO Report Card

  Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 5:02pm CET by Maile Ohye

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Webmaster Level: All
  
  How many of Google's web pages use a descriptive title tag? Do we use description meta tags? Heading tags? While we always try to focus on the user, could our products use an SEO tune up? These are just some of the questions we set out to answer with Google's SEO Report Card.
  
  Google's SEO Report Card is an effort to provide Google's product teams with ideas on how they can improve their products' pages using simple and accepted optimizations. These optimizations are intended to not only help search engines understand the content of our pages better, but also to improve our users' experience when visiting our sites. Simple steps such as fixing 404s and broken links, simplifying URL choice, and providing easier-to-understand titles and snippets for our pages can benefit both users and search engines. From the start of the project we also wanted to release the report card publicly so other companies and webmasters could learn from the report, which is filled with dozens of examples taken straight from our products' pages.
  
  The project looked at the main pages of 100 different Google products, measuring them across a dozen common optimization categories. Future iterations of the project might look at deeper Google product web pages as well as international ones. We released the report card within Google last month and since then a good number of teams have taken action on it or plan to.
  
  We hope you find our SEO Report Card useful and we'd love to hear your feedback in the comments below or in the Webmaster Central Help Forum. And if you'd like to do your own SEO tune up, a good place to start is by reading our free SEO Beginner's Guide.
  
  Written by Brandon Falls, Adi Goradia, and Charlene Perez, Search Quality Team
• 

  Is your site hacked? New Message Center notifications for hacking and abuse

  Posted: March 1st, 2010, 4:00pm CET by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Webmaster Level: All
  As we crawl the web, we see bad content inserted on to thousands of hacked sites each day. The number of sites attacked is staggering and the problem is only getting worse. Hackers and spammers target and successfully compromise any sites they can - small personal sites, schools and universities, even multinational corporations. Spam attacks against forums and user content sections of sites, though not as shocking, are even more widespread.
  You may have read in an earlier post that we've begun notifying webmasters about new software versions via Webmaster Tools to help protect their sites. Continuing with our effort to provide more useful information to webmasters, we're happy to announce that we'll soon be sending even more notifications to the Message Center.
  Starting this month, we will notify more webmasters of more potential issues we've detected on their websites, including:

  • Spammy or abused user-generated content
  • Abused forum pages or egregious amounts of comment spam
  • Suspected hacking

  These notifications are meant to alert webmasters of potential issues and provide next steps on how to get their sites fixed and back into Google's search results. If it pertains to a hacking or abuse issue, the notification will point to example URLs exhibiting this type of behavior. These notifications will run in parallel with our existing malware notifications.
  A notice of suspected hacking, for example, will look like this:
  
  We've been notifying webmasters of suspected hacking for years, but a recent upgrade to our systems will allow us to notify many more site owners that have been hacked. We hope webmasters will find these notifications useful in making sure their sites are clean and secure, ultimately providing a better user experience for their visitors. In the future, we may extend this effort even further to include other types of vulnerabilities or abuse issues.
  Just as before, webmasters who have not already signed up for Webmaster Tools may still do so and retrieve previously sent messages within one year of their send date. And if you don't want to miss out on any important messages, remember to use the email forwarding feature to receive these alerts in your inbox.
  If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in our Webmaster Help Forum or leave your comments below.
  Posted by Jessica Wong and Jason Morrison, Search Quality Team
• 

  State of the Index 2009

  Posted: January 20th, 2010, 3:50pm CET by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Webmaster Level: All
  At PubCon in Las Vegas in November 2009, I gave a "State of the Index" talk which covers what Google has done for users, web developers, and webmasters in the last year. I recently recreated it on video for those of you who didn't make it to the conference. You can watch it below:
  
  And here are the slides if you'd like to follow along:
  
  Posted by Matt Cutts, Search Quality Team
• 

  Answering your December Grab Bag questions

  Posted: January 14th, 2010, 10:16am CET by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Webmaster Level: All
  You asked and Matt Cutts answered. It's time to answer the latest round of Grab Bag questions! Here's the first answer, complete with Matt's new hairstyle:
  
  We have a lot of videos ready to share, so we're not currently taking new questions for the Grab Bag. If you have a question that you would like answered, your best bet as always is to head to our Webmaster Help Forum, where you'll find plenty of knowledgeable webmasters, including some Bionic Posters!
  To be kept up-to-date on our latest video releases, you can follow @googlewmc on Twitter, where we'll announce new videos and blog posts as they're published.
  Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team
• 

  Helping webmasters from user to user

  Posted: December 24th, 2009, 3:30pm CET by John Mueller

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  You have to have some kind of super-powers to keep up with all of the issues posted in our Webmaster Help Forum—that's why we call our Top Contributors the "Bionic Posters." They're able to leap through tall questions in a single bound, providing helpful and solid information all around. We're thankful to the Bionics for tackling problems both hard and easy (well, easy if you know how). Our current Bionic Posters are: Webado (Christina), Phil Payne, Red Cardinal (Richard), Shades1 (Louis), Autocrat, Tim Abracadabra, Aaron, Cristina, Robbo, John, Becky Sharpe, Sasch, BbDeath, Beussery (Brian), Chibcha (Terry), Luzie (Herbert), 奥宁 (Andy), Ashley, Kaleh and Redleg!
  
  With thousands of webmasters visiting the English Help Forum every day, some questions naturally pop up more often than others. To help catch these common issues, the Bionic Posters have also helped to create and maintain a comprehensive list of frequently asked questions and their answers. These FAQs cover everything from "Why isn't my site indexed?" to diagnosing difficult issues with the help of Google Webmaster Tools, often referring to our Webmaster Help Center for specific topics. Before you post in the forum, make sure you've read through these resources and do a quick search in the forum; chances are high that your question has been answered there already.
  
  Besides the Bionic Posters, we're lucky to have a number of very active and helpful users in the forum, such as: squibble, Lysis, yasir, Steven Lockey, seo101, RickyD, MartinJ and many more. Thank you all for making this community so captivating and—most of the time—friendly.
  
  Here are just a few (well, a little more than a few) of the many comments that we've seen posted in the forum:
  
  

  • "Thank you for this forum... Thank you to those that take the time to answer and care!"
  • "I've only posted one question here, but have received a wealth of knowledge by reading tons of posts and answers. The time you experts put into helping people with their problems is very inspiring and my hat's off to each of you. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that your services aren't going unnoticed and I truly appreciate the lessons."
  • "Thank you very much cristina, what you told me has done the trick. I really appriciate the help as this has been bugging me for a while now and I didn't know what was wrong."
  • "thank you ssssssssssoooo much kaleh. "
  • "OK, Phil Payne big thanks to You! I have made changes and maybe people are starting to find me in G! Thanks to Ashley, I've started to make exclusive and relevant content for people."
  • "If anything, it has helped me reflect on the sites and projects of days gone by so as to see what I could have done better - so that I can deliver that much more and better results going forward. I've learned that some things I had done right, were spot on, and other issues could have been handled differently, as well as a host of technical information that I've stored away for future use. Bottom Line: this forum rocks and is incredibly helpful."
  • "I asked a handful of questions, got GREAT help while doing a whole lot of lurking, and now I've got a site that rocks!! (...) Huge thanks to all the Top Contributors, and a very special mention to WEBADO, who helped me a TON with my .htaccess file."
  • "Over the years of reading (and sometimes contributing) to this forum I think it has helped to remove many false assumptions and doubts over Google's ranking systems. Contrary to what many have said I verily believe Google can benefit small businesses. Keep up the good work. "
  • "The forum members are awesome and are a most impressive bunch. Their contribution is immeasurable as it is huge. Not only have they helped Google in their success as a profitable business entity, but also helped webmasters both aspiring and experienced. There is also an engender(ment) of "family" or "belonging" in the group that has transcended the best and worst of times (Current forum change still TBD :-) ). We can agree, disagree and agree to disagree but remain respectful and civil (Usually :-) )."
  • "Hi Redleg, Thank you very much for all of the information. Without your help, I don't think I would ever have known how to find the problem. "
  • "What an amazing board. Over the last few days I have asked 1 question and recieved a ton of advice mainly from Autocrat. "
  • "A big thank you to the forum and the contributors that helped me get my site on Google . After some hassle with my web hosters and their naff submission service, issues over adding pages Google can see, issues over Sitemaps, I can now say that when I put my site name into the search and when i put in [custom made watch box], for instance, my site now comes up."
  • "Thank you Autocrat! You are MAGNIFICENT! (...) I am your biggest fan today. : ) Imagine Joe Cocker singing With a Little Help from My Friends...that's my theme song today."
  • "I've done a lot of reading since then and I've learned more in the last year than I learned in the previous 10. When I stumbled into this forum I had no idea what I was getting into but finding this forum was a gift from God! Words cannot express the amount of gratitude I feel for the help you have given me and I wish I could repay you some how.... I don't mean to sound so mushy, but I write this with tears in my eyes and I am truly, truly grateful..."

  
  Are you new to the Webmaster Help Forum? Tell us a little bit about yourself and then join us to learn more and help others!
  
  Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Zürich
• 

  One million YouTube views!

  Posted: October 21st, 2009, 2:34pm CEST by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Earlier this year, we launched our very own Webmaster Central channel on YouTube. Just today, we saw our total video views exceed one million! On the road to this milestone, we uploaded 154 videos, for a total of nearly 11 hours of webmaster-focused media. These videos have brought you conference presentations, updates on tools for webmasters, general tips, and of course answers to your "Grab bag" questions for Matt Cutts.
  
  To celebrate our one million views, we're sharing a fun video with you in which Matt Cutts shows us what happened when he lost a bet with his team:
  
  
  
  We're also pleased to announce that we've added captions to all of our videos and plan to do so for our future videos as well. Thank you to everyone who has watched, shared, and commented on our videos. We look forward to the next million views!
  
  Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team
• 

  Spanish Site Clinic now live

  Posted: September 17th, 2009, 8:09am CEST by Cristina, Equipo de Calidad de Búsqueda

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  The Google Webmaster Central blog in Spanish has launched a Site Clinic especially for the Spanish-speaking market. We're offering to analyze a series of websites in order to share some best practices with our community using real web sites. The plan is to offer constructive advice on accessibility and improvements that can lead to better visibility in Google's search results.
  During this month, we will be receiving submissions from any legitimate website, but it must be primarily in Spanish. So before you submit your site, please visit the original post and if you want to participate fill out the form as soon as possible, because we will only be selecting 3-5 websites from the first 200 submitted for this Site Clinic, so don't miss out!
  
  Posted by Esperanza, Search Quality Team
• 

  Webmaster Central YouTube update for July 6th - 10th

  Posted: July 13th, 2009, 7:55pm CEST by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Want to see what's new on the Webmaster Central YouTube channel? Check out the answers to the latest Grab Bag questions:

  • How do meta geo tags influence the search results?
  • Will Google find text in images someday?
  • Is Google doing away with use of the meta description?
  • "Query deserves freshness." Fact or fiction?
  • Which is more reliable for searching: Google or Twitter?

  Below is Matt's clarification about Google's use of the meta description tag:
  
  Feel free to leave comments letting us know how you liked the videos, and if you have any specific questions, ask the experts in the Webmaster Help Forum.
  Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team
• 

  Webmaster Central YouTube update for June 29th - July 3rd

  Posted: July 7th, 2009, 4:03pm CEST by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Want to see what's new on the Webmaster Central YouTube channel? Check out the answers to the latest Grab Bag questions:

  • How can I optimize my site on a small budget?
  • When will the data in Webmaster Tools be improved?
  • Can my blogroll affect my blog's reputation in Google?
  • Will a link to a page disallowed in robots.txt transfer PageRank?

  Do you run a small business? Check out Matt's tips on how to attract visitors on a small budget:
  
  Feel free to leave comments letting us know how you liked the videos, and if you have any specific questions, ask the experts in the Webmaster Help Forum.
  Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team
• 

  Webmaster Central YouTube update for June 22nd - 26th

  Posted: June 30th, 2009, 12:22pm CEST by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Want to know what's new on the Webmaster Central YouTube channel? Here's what we've uploaded in the past week:
  As part of Google's goal to make the web faster, we uploaded several video tips about optimizing the speed of your website. Check out the tutorials page to view the tutorials and associated videos.
  Matt Cutts answered a new question each day from the Grab Bag:

  • What are some best practices for moving to a new CMS?
  • Is over-optimization bad for a website?
  • Will having my software listed in low-quality directories harm my website's ranking?
  • Can the geographic location of a web server affect SEO?
  • Will I be penalized if all of my Sitemap URLs have the same priority?

  And during Adam Lasnik's visit to India, he was interviewed by Webmaster Help Forum guide Jayan Tharayil about issues related to webmasters in India. We have the full three-part interview right here.
  We'll get you started on this batch of videos with Matt's tips for targeting your site to a specific region:
  
  Feel free to leave comments letting us know how you liked the videos, and if you have any specific questions, ask the experts in the Webmaster Help Forum.
  Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team
• 

  Webmaster Central YouTube update for June 15th - 19th

  Posted: June 22nd, 2009, 5:36pm CEST by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Want to know what's new on the Webmaster Central YouTube channel? Here's what we've uploaded in the past week:
  
  Maile Ohye gave a webmaster-focused presentation about Product Search.
  
  Matt Cutts answered a new question each day from the Grab Bag:
  

  • Do dates in URLs determine freshness?
  • What impact does "page bloat" have on Google rankings?
  • What types of directories are seen as sources of paid links?
  • Should I include my logo text using the 'alt' attribute or CSS?
  • What's the preferred way to check for links to my site?

  To get you started on watching this latest batch of videos, here's Matt's answer about directories and paid links:
  
  
  
  Feel free to leave comments letting us know how you liked the videos, and if you have any specific questions, ask the experts in the Webmaster Help Forum.
  
  Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team
• 

  Webmaster Central YouTube update for June 8th - 12th

  Posted: June 15th, 2009, 4:22pm CEST by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Want to know what's new on the Webmaster Central YouTube channel? Here's what we've uploaded in the past week:
  
  Matt Cutts answered a few new questions from the Grab Bag:
  

  • What if a search for my business triggers "Did you mean?"
  • Why do big brands rank so well?
  • Are CSS-based layouts better than tables for SEO?

  Matt also went over a great example of whitehat linkbait:
  
  
  
  And if you've ever thought about hiding text, here's one technique that didn't fool Google:
  
  
  
  Feel free to leave comments letting us know how you liked the videos, and if you have any specific questions, ask the experts in the Webmaster Help Forum.
  
  Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team
• 

  Webmaster Central YouTube update for June 1st - 5th

  Posted: June 8th, 2009, 4:33pm CEST by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Want to know what's new on the Webmaster Central YouTube channel? Here's what we've uploaded in the past week:
  
  Matt Cutts answered a new question each day from the Grab Bag:
  

  • Are shortened URLs treated differently than other redirects?
  • How can I make sure Google reaches my deeper pages?
  • What impact does server location have on rankings?
  • Will a "coming soon" page negatively impact my site?
  • How many pages can Google index from a single site?

  In response to questions we've been getting about the videos themselves, we created a behind the scenes look at our setup. And just to throw in some more variety, Matt took a break from SEO questions for a few minutes to show off a fun use of a barcode scanner with Google Book Search. You can read more about it on the Inside Google Book Search blog.
  
  For your instant viewing pleasure, here's the answer to the question about URL shortners:
  
  
  And now a peek behind the scenes:
  
  
  Feel free to leave comments letting us know how you liked the videos, and if you have any specific questions, ask the experts in the Webmaster Help Forum.
  
  Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team
• 

  Webmaster Central YouTube update for May 26-29

  Posted: June 1st, 2009, 5:18pm CEST by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  In February, we launched the Webmaster Central YouTube channel, and since then we've been busy keeping it fresh with new content. We're not yet uploading 20 hours every minute, but did you know that we've been releasing a new video almost every weekday? You can keep up with the latest updates by subscribing to our channel in YouTube, or by adding our feed to your RSS reader.
  
  If you're more of a weekly digest kind of person, we're here for you too. For every week that we have new videos available, we'll let you know here on the blog. In the videos uploaded in the past week, you'll find answers to these questions from Matt's Grab Bag:
  
  Can product descriptions be considered duplicate content?
  How can new pages get indexed quickly?
  What are your views on PageRank sculpting?
  Will you ever switch to a Mac?
  
  Feel free to leave comments letting us know how you liked the videos, and if you have any specific questions, ask the experts in the Webmaster Help Forum.
  
  Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team
• 

  Google Webmaster Help Forums in more languages

  Posted: April 30th, 2009, 12:48pm CEST by Reid Yokoyama

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Traditionally when we launch a new communication channel, we also give the shareholders a chance to introduce themselves. We did so when we opened webmaster help communities for European webmasters almost two years ago, and also more than a year ago, when we were able to expand and add groups in three more languages. Last December we were very happy to announce the re-launch of two of our Help Forums in a new and cool look and feel.
  
  Today, we're happy to announce that we keep on increasing the global dialogue with webmasters, opening an Arabic and a Czech/Slovak Webmaster Help Forum. Furthermore, we would like to highlight the support we offer in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. While we've offered support to Chinese webmasters for a little more than a year, the Japanese and Korean forums are only a few weeks old. Keeping with tradition, the guides monitoring our new forums would like to introduce themselves to the global webmaster family:
  
  Arabic Webmaster Help Forum
  
  مرحبا! My name is Adel and I'll be monitoring the Arabic Webmaster Help Forum. I'm originally from Beirut, Lebanon. After finishing computer science studies, I joined Google, some 18 months ago.
  
  Besides working on search quality in Arabic and building a community on our forum, I enjoy traveling and listening to really loud heavy metal music; sometimes I get to do both at the same time! ;-)
  
  I am looking forward to a lot of questions regarding Arabic Google Search and of course ranking and indexing issues on your sites to come. I hope I'll see you there soon!
  - Adel
  
  Czech/Slovak Webmaster Help Forum
  
  Zdravím! I am Marcel, the Google Guide on the Czech/Slovak Webmaster Help Forum. I am originally from Slovakia. After graduating in New Media and Industrial Design, it took me some time and traveling around the globe before moving to Dublin and eventually joining Google some 3 years ago.
  
  Ever since, I've been working in different teams. I was lucky to be part of the AdSense team where I participated in launching AdSense for Content for Czech and Slovak. Since my transition to Search Quality, I enjoy working on improving the quality of our natural search results in Czech, Slovak, and Polish.
  
  Besides my work I have a few more passions, such as listening to live music in Irish pubs, challenging my colleagues in occasional Soulcalibur skirmishes on Playstation and testing burger places all over the world :-) If you want to discuss any of these topics or maybe something about your sites, please join the community. I am looking forward to meeting you there :-)
  - Marcel
  Chinese Webmaster Help Forum
  
  你好! Hi from the Chinese Webmaster Help Forum team! The Chinese Webmaster Help Forum has received great support from webmasters since its launch in March 2008. In March 2009, the Chinese Webmaster Help Forum moved to a new system with many more user-friendly features for better information sharing. It has become a good platform for webmasters to share their knowledge of Google search and Webmaster Tools and to communicate with Google.
  
  The Chinese Forum now has 6 Google Guides: Xiang (降龙十巴掌), Eric (趙錢孫李), Marina (小馬過河), Chris (城镇), Hyson (草帽路飞), and Fa (法人戴表). We are from many different provinces of mainland China. When not spending time in the forum, we enjoy playing ping-pong and foosball in the office. A few of us are huge video game fans. You may learn more about us when you participate in the forum :)
  
  A big thank you to everyone who has taken part in forum discussions! We hope to see both familiar faces and newcomers join in the Chinese Webmaster Help Forum!
  - Xiang (降龙十巴掌), Eric (趙錢孫李), Marina (小馬過河), Chris (城镇), Hyson (草帽路飞), and Fa (法人戴表)
  
  Japanese Webmaster Help Forum
  
  こんにちは! Hello from the Japanese Webmaster Help Forum team! Our names are Nao ( なお ), Kaede ( 楓 ), Haru ( ハル ), and Kyotaro. We are the four guides working in Google Search Quality for Japanese. We've just launched our forum on March 6th.
  
  All of us were born in Japan and grew up here. Nao has also lived in Greece, the Netherlands, and New York. Haru is from the west side of Japan, which is known for its talkative culture and traditional Japanese comedy. Maybe you will read Haru's unique communication on our forum :)
  
  As for our interests, we love eating and drinking! Between posting on the forum, we enjoy Google's excellent lunches and sweets a lot. After working, of course, we sometimes go out for a drink with our team members :) Kaede knows all the nice bars in Tokyo.
  
  Nao and Kyotaro love Sumo wrestling. We've watched two tournaments this year with Googlers from other locations. Haru, of course, loves watching comedies!
  
  We are really excited and happy to see many users joining our forum and sharing tips with each other. Looking forward to seeing you there!
  - Nao ( なお ), Kaede ( 楓 ), Haru ( ハル ), and Kyotaro
  
  Korean Webmaster Help Forum
  
  안녕하세요! Hello everyone, my name is Joowon and I work in Google Search Quality for Korean. I was born in Germany and lived in Korea for a few years before moving to Hawaii, California and New York to attend high school and college. After all that traveling, I'm only fluent in Korean and English, with a bit of proficiency in Japanese. Some of the interests I've developed over the years are design, wine, cooking, yoga, and sustainability issues.
  
  Currently I'm back in Seoul and enjoying the dynamic atmosphere here, with lots of interesting people and great food. The Korean Webmaster Help Forum was launched only a few weeks ago, and I'm very much looking forward to talking to all of you. See you in the forum!
  - Joowon
  
  Hello world! ;) I am Andrew and I am part of the Search Quality team in Seoul. I grew up in a port city in the southern part of Korea. Ironically, I don't eat seafood because it looks scary to me :( Many of my friends and colleagues love to make jokes about that, but I still don't eat any seafood yet. Playing drums, traveling and photography are my main interests. Currently I'm a drummer of "Spring Fingers", the first band of Google Korea, and we'll have our first concert at the end of April!
  
  I love playing around with web technologies/APIs and find it very exciting to exchange information and ideas on the web. The Korean Webmaster Help Forum was recently launched and I hope to see you there!
  - Andrew
  
  If you're curious about our Webmaster Help Forums in other languages, please feel free to peak in. Here's a list of our currently monitored Webmaster Help Forums: Arabic, Chinese, Czech/Slovak, Dutch, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.
  
  Written by Joowon Ahn, Andrew Baek, Adel Saud, Kaspar Szymanski, Fa Wang, Reid Yokoyama, and Marcel Zavacky, Search Quality Team
• 

  Introducing the Google Webmaster Central YouTube Channel

  Posted: February 23rd, 2009, 1:30pm CET by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  In his State of the Index presentation, Matt Cutts said that one of the things to look for from Google in 2009 is continued communication with webmasters. On the Webmaster Central team, we've found that using video is a great way to reach people. We've shown step-by-step instructions on how to use features of Webmaster Tools, shared our presentations with folks who were unable to make it to conferences, and even taken you through a day in the life of our very own Maile Ohye as she meets with many Googlers involved in webmaster support.
  
  We plan on releasing more videos like these in the future, so we've opened up our own channel on YouTube to host webmaster-related videos. Our first video is already up, and we'll have more to share with you soon. If you want to be the first to know when we release something new, you can subscribe to us using your YouTube account, or grab this RSS feed if you'd like to keep track in your feed reader. Please let us know how you like the channel, and use the comments in this post to share your ideas for future videos.
  
  And while we'll all do our best to make sure Matt Cutts understands that Rick Rolling is so last year, be careful where you click on April 1st.
  
  Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team
• 

  State of the Index: my presentation from PubCon Vegas

  Posted: February 18th, 2009, 5:15pm CET by Michael Wyszomierski

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  It seems like people enjoyed when I recreated my Virtual Blight talk from the Web 2.0 Summit late last year, so we decided to post another video. This video recreates the "State of the Index" talk that I did at PubCon in Las Vegas late last year as well.
  
  Here's the video of the presentation:
  
  
  and if you'd like to follow along, here are the slides:
  
  
  
  You can also access the presentation directly. Thanks again to Wysz for recording this video and splicing the slides into the video.
  Posted by Matt Cutts, Search Quality Team
• 

  Help us help you

  Posted: February 11th, 2009, 3:32pm CET by Matt Dougherty

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  You're a webmaster, right? Well, we love webmasters! To ensure we give you the best support possible, we've set up a survey to get your thoughts on Webmaster Central and our related support efforts. If you have a few extra minutes this week, please click here to give us your honest feedback.
  
  Thanks from all of us on the Webmaster Central Team.
  
  Posted by Matt Dougherty, Search Quality
  
• 

  Reintroducing your English Webmaster Help Google Guides

  Posted: December 7th, 2008, 9:30pm CET by Reid Yokoyama

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  When we announced our latest round of Bionic Posters in the old Help Group, an astute webmaster noted that we had never fully introduced ourselves to the webmaster community. With our announcement of a new English Webmaster Help forum, I'm happy to (re)introduce you all to the Google Guides from around the world who will be hanging out in the English forum:
  
  Guides in Mountain View, California (from left to right): Adam, Maile, Matt Cutts, Chris, Wysz, Matt, Chark, and Adi.
  
  Also in Mountain View: Evan, Jessica, and Nate.
  
  Guides in Kirkland, Washington: Susan, Riona, and Jonathan.
  
  Guides in Zürich, Switzerland: John Mueller and Balázs.
  
  Guides in Hyderabad, India: Koti, Reid (visiting from Mountain View), and Jayan.
  
  Guide in Ottowa Ottawa :), Ontario: Oliver. All of us look forward to seeing you around the forum! Our Google Guides in non-English Webmaster Help Groups introduce themselves here.
  
  Written by Reid Yokoyama, Search Quality
• 

  A day in the life of webmaster support

  Posted: July 30th, 2008, 7:08pm CEST by Maile Ohye

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  It was an ordinary Wednesday morning when I decided to film my day at the Googleplex...
  
  
  
  A recap of the day's events
  
  10AM Meeting with the webmaster support team

  Our team shares a doc containing our current agenda and the previous meetings' agenda, minutes, and action items. In this meeting, we discussed:

  • Feedback from blog post on Duplicate content due to scrapers. Some webmasters suggested that we could improve our detection. In order to improve quality, it would help to get feedback with specific examples. Susan Moskwa, one of our Webmaster Trends Analysts based in Kirkland, Washington, volunteered to post a blog comment to solicit more information.
  
  
  • Recent and upcoming releases
  • Webmaster Tools API on schedule
  • "Skip intro" in search results
  
  
  • JuneTune online chat agenda
  
  
  • Two recent spam techniques mentioned in the blogosphere. Brian White, who leads one of the Webspam-fighting groups at Google, explained that one technique is new twist on old idea, both are already handled.

  11AM Meeting with Matt Cutts

  Matt provided feedback on:

  • Proposal to write follow-up blog comment on duplicate content caused by scrapers to solicit specific examples. Approved.
  
  
  • "URLs and case sensitivity basics" presentation for online chat

  1PM Lunch with Shyam, a Crawl engineer, and Jason, and AdSense engineer
  2PM Meeting with Wysz to review slides for Google Trifecta
  5PM Little "drive-by" to catch Reid, Evan, Charlene, Jessica, and Wysz while they're monitoring the discussion group
  7PM Dinner with Matthias
  p.s. A huge thanks to Wysz for his film editing skillz.
  
  Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead
• 

  What are your SEO recommendations?

  Posted: June 30th, 2008, 2:31pm CEST by Susan Moskwa

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Posted by the Webmaster Trends Analysts (John, Jonathan, Susan)

  You may have noticed that we recently rewrote our article on What is an SEO? Does Google recommend them? Previously, the article had focused on warning people about common SEO scams to look out for, but didn't mention many of the valuable services that a helpful SEO can provide.

  The article now notes some of the benefits of search engine optimization, and provides some guidance to site owners who are considering hiring an SEO. We'd also like to get your perspective: how would you define SEO? What questions would you ask a prospective SEO? What advice would you give to an inexperienced webmaster who's considering whether to contract an SEO? We'd like to hear your thoughts and incorporate your feedback if there's important advice that we should add.

• 

  One year of monitored European Webmaster Help Groups

  Posted: June 24th, 2008, 7:27am CEST by John Mueller

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Written by Kaspar Szymanski and the European Guides Team, Dublin
  
  A year ago Google Guides from the Search Quality Team started monitoring Google Webmaster Help Groups in European languages. It has been an interesting time and a great, rewarding experience for all those involved :o). We have enjoyed building and growing our communities with webmasters across Europe and we hope you have as well. The feedback we have been receiving since the beginning has been encouraging, with many webmasters responding positively to the opportunity to be able to solve their indexing issues in their native language. Still, we are aware that we have a lot of work ahead of us. I would like to thank everyone who has been active in our communities and invite those who have not joined yet to do so. Sign up, participate and help us make a difference.
  
  Taking advantage of this anniversary, I would like the European Google Guides to have a chance to say a few words about their communities.
  
  Polish Webmaster Help Group
  Guglarz, the Polish Google Guide
  Our group grew very fast, especially in the last few months and we are well on the way to hitting 600 users! But what I appreciate even more then our group's success, is the open, friendly spirit we have been cultivating in the last twelve months :o). I feel like this is a community that is able to help with indexing issues and beyond!
  
  I already pointed out some exceptional community members in the last blog post about communication with webmasters in a dozen languages. Since then, a few more have joined the list of tremendously committed, group-driving contributors. Bigu has been jumping in every time I've been traveling or very busy, which is the reason why I’d like to thank him a lot.
  
  Also I want to acknowledge Maciej Gluszek for escalating language issues we used to struggle with. You guys help to improve the Google experience for everyone.
  
  Lastly, I want to invite all group members to the chit chat section in order to introduce yourself and share some more information about who you are and what you do. I am really curious to find out more about the people I work with! I hope to see you in the group soon :o).
  
  ---
  Группа помощи Google для веб-мастеров
  Oxana, Tilek, Vitali, Mariya
  Our Russian Webmaster Help group is growing by the day and just reached an important milestone - a whole kilobyte of members: 1024 (-:! Thanks to all our users for the great questions, the wisdom, and the humour which they bring to our community. Special thanks go to Web-Master, Crazy LionHeart, Andrey Morozov and Lmd for their spot-on comments and prolific posts - we really appreciate your dedication in helping others. We're very happy to be part of such a savvy and lively community, we look forward to more interesting questions and discussions in the future, and to reaching one megabyte of members (-:! С днем рождения!
  
  ---
  Google Webmester Súgó Csoport
  Tibor, János
  Although the Hungarian Webmaster Help Group is one of our youngest, it already counts 300+ members, and has a pretty high number of lively discussions. The atmosphere is really great and loads of issues are resolved thanks largely to our dedicated and wise users. I would especially like to thank snomag for helping greatly in building the group up in the beginning (where have you disappeared to? We miss you! :)
  
  ---
  Google Site Yöneticisi Yardım Grubu
  Bahar
  The Turkish Webmaster Help Group has grown into a dynamic and effective community of fantastic webmasters in just four months. I want to thank to everyone in the group who has been eager to share his/her knowledge to help others. Special thanks to Erkan (man_blood) who has written a huge amount of posts in the last three months; Merve who has helped the group with her technical skills as well as calm spirit, especially when I was on vacation; Salih (SesVer) who used to help a lot when the group was first launched; and many more who are not mentioned by name here. It has been exciting and a pleasure to be a part of this rapidly growing family! Desteğiniz için teşekkürler :-)
  
  ---
  קבוצת העזרה למנהלי ומנהלות אתרים
  Alon, your Google Guide
  Our Hebrew group is maturing. To date we have more than 200 users and we are gaining visibility while more users are using the well-informed discussions we produce.
  
  It is a pleasure to see so many webmasters stopping by to ask, learn and help others. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of you who make the group a place for discussion and collaboration. My special thanks go to Shoshanna, AliaG, Tomer and Seosos, for their great contribution.
  
  By browsing through the “tell us about yourself ” thread you can learn more about our community where many members introduce themselves. You're also welcome to watch my short video giving some specific tips for Israeli Webmasters.
  
  ---
  Google diskussionsgruppe for webmasters
  GoogleGuide (Jonas)
  The Danish group has been slowly gaining more subscribers since its launch last year, and we still hope to attract more people. We've grown almost 100% in the past year, and we hope to keep up the steam! (: This growth wouldn't have been possible without the help of Anders who contributes equal amounts of webmaster goodness in the form of sharing his tips on 301's and moving content to a new domain (which has been the hottest and most debated topic in the group), to issues on getting your site better indexed and crawled. So a big thanks to Anders, and all the others who have made this group useful for everybody.
  
  ---
  Ajuda a Webmasters do Google
  Pedro
  The Portuguese Webmaster Help Group is now above 1200 members. The success of the group is a reflection on the great community built by every single contributor. Special thanks to Carlos Lavieri, Rodrigo Soares, Leandro Leite e João Carlos (Orquiza) who used to help so much and recently Flávio Raimundo (M&S) and Ruben Zevallos Jr.
  
  Recently I had the chance of giving a few public interviews to Portuguese speaking webmasters and recognizing the group and its success publicly. I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank my interviewers for their great questions; if you speak Portuguese or you are a Google Translator fan you can read them: Entrevista com Pedro Dias (by Paulo Teixeira) and Entrevista a Pedro Dias (by Kazulo Webmarketing). It is a great pleasure to be a part of such an awesome community.
  
  ---
  Googlen Keskusteluryhmä Verkkovastaaville
  Anu
  The Finnish Webmaster Help Group will be celebrating its first birthday soon. During the first year, we've built a small but dynamic community and covered various topics from general webmaster issues to language-related toughies. A huge thank you to everyone who has taken part in discussions! I'm looking forward to starting our second year as a group, hope to see both familiar faces and newcomers join in our community!
  
  ---
  Groupe Google d'entraide pour les webmasters
  Alec, Nathalie
  
  The French Webmaster Help Group was launched one year ago and we've had a tremendous growth thanks to all our fantastic members. Special thanks to Paul-Arnaud and Cyrille who used to help so much and to Thierry who is now our bionic poster :-)
  
  Recently I had the chance to discuss the Webmaster Help Group with a French SEO I met at SES Paris '08. It was so great to connect again on the Internet and help him with his issues.
  
  ---
  Swedish Webmaster Help Group
  Hessam, the Swedish Google Guide
  The small Swedish webmaster forum, with currently almost 200 users, has almost tripled its size since its launch last July. During the past year we have seen a steady growth in user participation and a number of questions from our Swedish webmasters. I also had the chance to attend Search Marketing Expo (SMX) Stockholm 2007 which was definitely the highlight of the year. There I was able to meet a number of Swedish webmasters to talk about Google, our Webmaster Tools as well as the cold Swedish winter. During the coming year we are determined to further grow the community to better support our users. Lastly, a big thanks goes to everyone who has supported the group, especially Mattias Nordin and Widar Nord who have contributed with their knowledge and time. I am looking forward to hearing more from our regulars and would like to extend an invite to new members.
  
  ---
  Google Diskussionsforum für Webmaster
  Uli
  With more than 2700 members and almost a thousand posts per month, the German Webmaster Help Group has developed into a vibrant community. You will find many very savvy webmasters there who are always prepared to discuss all webmaster-related issues and offer advice to both beginners and advanced webmasters.
  
  I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed to this forum. Some webmasters like luzie, alpaka, beejees, Garzosch have been a crucial part of our group since this group began, and with the likes of Zombie joining in October, Mikki in January and Sistrix in March after having the pleasure of meeting him at SMX in Munich, we have an ever-growing pool of wisdom :-)
  
  ---
  Foro de Google para Webmasters
  Rebecca, Alvar
  The Spanish webmaster group now has almost 2500 members. We have some wonderful webmasters that offer great advice and support, people like Ricardo Antonio, Enrique de Mesa, Jesús Cáceres (chupi), Jose Antonio Nobile (nobilesoft), Carles Pastor, and many others who help make this forum work as well as it does. Recently we had one member visit whose site had been hacked with a cloaking technique and the community was able to help point out how to detect the hidden links and clear the hacked content. It’s great to see his website clean again and up and running.
  
  If you want to know who is behind this forum, have a look at the video where we introduce the forum and Webmaster Tools. Additionally, please give any feedback you may have in the thread where we present the video. By the way, it was great meeting some of you guys face to face at the SMX Madrid conference.
  
  ---
  Google Discussiegroep voor Webmaster
  Andre, Jos
  Our Dutch Webmaster Help Group now has well over 700 members. Some of our regular posters, like Marketsharer, Janus and Joop are doing a great job helping a lot of our less experienced (as well as more experienced!) webmasters with their questions. Recently, some Dutch webmasters have been dealing with the fact that their sites have been hacked. We've added a sticky post to the group to help webmasters clean up their sites after getting hacked, so if you are dealing with this issue, do have a look at the group! At this moment, the group is still steadily growing and we are really looking forward to reaching the 1000 members mark!
  
  ---
  Google Assistenza Webmaster
  Lella, Alessandro, Stefano
  The Italian webmaster group is about to turn one year old pretty soon and has been a great success. We have a bunch of fabulous witty power posters like Angelo Palma (Angelo), Marco (Customsoft) and others that keep on massively contributing to the success of the group day by day. Over the last year we achieved excellent results both in terms of traffic increase and new users posting frequently. Coordinating the localization of the post on paid links - later translated into 14 languages - was a turning point for the Webmaster Help team. So was Lella's blog post in English, German and Italian about the Search Engine Strategies Conference in London, where she represented Google as a speaker.
  
  ---
  
  Webmaster Help Group Guides and Domo-Kun, the team mascot
  
  Speaking on behalf of all our Google Guides, we are looking forward to continued collaboration with webmasters all over the world. Surely the upcoming 12 months are going to be exciting for the Google Help Groups as the communities continue to grow. Thanks again to all the great webmasters out there and see you soon in the discussions!
• 

  Join us for another live chat - June 19, 2008

  Posted: June 16th, 2008, 9:46pm CEST by Adam Lasnik

  Tags:  feedback and communication  

  Written by Adam Lasnik, Search Evangelist
  When it comes to talking with webmasters, we just can't get enough.
  This past March we had the pleasure of connecting with hundreds of you online in our first-ever Webmaster Help Group online live chat, which included a presentation on Images in Google Search by Maile, lots of feedback from you on webmaster issues, a site clinic, and dozens of questions answered by folks from our Google Webmaster Central team.
  Given the success of this previous chat, we've decided to do it again.  We're hosting another free live chat (dubbed JuneTune), and we'd love to have you attend!Here's what you'll need:

  • About an hour of free time.
  • A phone, or ability to make a phone call online (e.g., with Skype or Gizmo5, etc.)
  • An internet-connected computer, and these additional specifications.
  • A URL for the chat, which you can only get when you register for the event  (you can likely do this in under 60 seconds)

  What will our JuneTune chat include?  

  • INTRO:  A quick hello from some of your favorite Help Group Guides
  • PRESO:  A presentation on Personalization in Google Search by our own John Mueller.
  • FAQs:  We're calling this "Three for Three," and we'll have three different Googlers tackling three different issues we've seen come up in the Group recently.  What will they be?  You'll just have to attend the chat to find out!
  • And lots of Q&A!  You'll have a chance to type questions during the entire session, and we'll pick as many as we can to answer in writing and in speaking during the chat.

  When and how can you join in?

  • Mark the date on your calendar now: Thursday, June 19, for about one hour starting at 2:00pm PDT / 5:00pm EDT / 21:00 UTC / 23:00 CET 
  • Register right now for this event. Please note that you'll need to click on the "register" link on the lefthand side.
  • Using the link e-mailed to you by WebEx (the service hosting the event), log in 5-10 minutes prior to 2pm PDT.

  
  We hope you can stop by, and look forward to chatting with you!  In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to post a note in this Groups thread.