Easier navigation without GPS
Webmaster level: All
Today we’re unveiling a shiny new navigation in Webmaster Tools. The update will make the features you already use easier to find, as well as unveil some exciting additions.
Navigation reflects how search works
We’ve organized the Webmaster Tools features in groups that match the stages of search:
- Crawl: see information about how we discover and crawl your content. Here you will find crawl stats, crawl errors, any URLs you’ve blocked from crawling, Sitemaps, URL parameters, and the Fetch as Google feature.
- Google Index: keep track of how many of your pages are in Google’s index and how we understand their content: you can monitor the overall indexed counts for your site (Index Status), see what keywords we’ve found on your pages (Content Keywords), or request to remove URLs from the search results.
- Search Traffic: check how your pages are doing in the search results — how people find your site (Search Queries), who’s recommended your site (Links to Your Site), and see a sample of pages from your site that have incoming links from other internal pages.
- Search Appearance: mark up your pages to help Google understand your content better during indexing and potentially influence how your pages appear in our search results. This includes the Structured Data dashboard, Data Highlighter, Sitelinks, and HTML Improvements.
Account-level administrative tasks now accessible from the Settings menu
Account-level admin tasks such as setting User permissions, Site Settings, and Change of Address are now grouped under the gear icon in the top right corner so they’re always accessible to you:
This is the list of items as visible to site owners, “full” or “restricted” users will see a subset of these options. For example, if you’re a “restricted” user for a site, the “Users & Site Owners” menu item will not appear.
New Search Appearance pop-up
Beginner webmasters will appreciate the new Search Appearance pop-up, which can be used to visualize how your site may appear in search and learn more about the content or structure changes that may help to influence each element:
To access the pop-up window, click on the question mark icon next to the Search Appearance menu in the side navigation.
It includes the essential search result elements like title, snippet and URL, as well as optional elements such as sitelinks, breadcrumbs, search within a site, event and product rich snippets, and authorship information.
We hope the new navigation makes it easier for you to make the most of Webmaster Tools. As always, if you have additional questions, feel free to post in the Webmaster Help Forum.
Posted by Mariya Moeva, Webmaster Trends Analyst
Introducing website satisfaction by Google Consumer Surveys
Webmaster level: all
We’re now offering webmasters an easy and free way to collect feedback from your website visitors with website satisfaction surveys. All you have to do is paste a small snippet of code in the HTML for your website and this will load a discreet satisfaction survey in the lower right hand corner of your website. Google automatically aggregates and analyzes responses, providing the data back to you through a simple online interface.
Users will be asked to complete a four-question satisfaction survey. Surveys will run until they have received 500 responses and will start again after 30 days so you can track responses over time. This is currently limited to US English visitors on non-mobile devices. The default questions are free and you can customize questions for just $0.01 per response or $5.00 for 500 responses.
Survey Setup and Code Placement Tips
To set up the survey code, you’ll need to have access to the source code for your website.
- Sign into Google Consumer Surveys for website satisfaction to find the code snippet.
- You have the option to enter the website name and URL, survey timing, and survey frequency.
- Click on the “Activate survey” button when ready.
- Once you find the code snippet on top of the setup page, copy and paste it into your web page, just before the closing </head> tag. If your website uses templates to generate pages, enter it just before the closing </head> tag in the file that contains the <head> section.
If you have any questions, please read our Help Center article to learn more.
Posted by Marisa Currie-Rose
Backlinks and reconsideration requests
Webmaster level: advanced
When talking to site owners on Google Webmaster Forums we come across questions on reconsideration requests and how to handle backlink-related issues. Here are some common questions, along with our recommendations.
When should I file a reconsideration request?
If your site violates our Google Quality Guidelines or did in the past, a manual spam action may be applied to your site to prevent spam in our search results. You may learn about this violation from a notification in Google Webmaster Tools, or perhaps from someone else such as a previous owner or SEO of the site. To get this manual action revoked, first make sure that your site no longer violates the quality guidelines. After you’ve done that, it’s time to file a reconsideration request.
Should I file a reconsideration request if I think my site is affected by an algorithmic change?
Reconsideration requests are intended for sites with manual spam actions. If your site’s visibility has been solely affected by an algorithmic change, there’s no manual action to be revoked, and therefore no need to file a reconsideration request. If you’re unsure if it’s an algorithmic change or a manual action, and have found issues that you have resolved, then submitting a reconsideration request is fine.
How can I assess the quality of a site’s backlinks?
The links to your site section of Google Webmaster Tools is a great starting point for an investigation as it shows a significant amount of your site’s inbound links. If you know that you ran an SEO campaign during a particular period of time, downloading the latest links can come handy in slicing links created at that time. Using the links found in Google Webmaster Tools, we recommend looking for patterns that point to general issues that are worth resolving. For example, spammy blog comments, auto generated forum posts or text advertisements with links that pass PageRank are likely to be seen as unnatural links and would violate Google’s quality guidelines. For individual examples and hands-on advice we recommend getting help of peers and expert webmasters on the Google Webmaster Forum.
How do I clean a bad backlink profile?
Make sure to identify poor links first, then make a strong effort to get them either removed or nofollowed. Then use the Disavow Links Tool to deal with remaining unnatural backlinks. We recommend using domain-wide operator for sites with a complicated URL structure, very obvious spam sites, such as gibberish content sites or low quality sites with content that shows no editorial value. See our video on common mistakes when using the disavow tool for more information.
How much information do I need to provide?
Detailed documentation submitted along with a reconsideration request can contribute to its success, as it demonstrates the efforts made by the webmaster and helps Googlers with their investigation. If you are including a link to a shared document, make sure that it’s accessible to anyone with the link.
How long does it take to process reconsideration requests?
Reconsideration requests for sites affected by a manual spam action are investigated by a Googler. We strive to respond in a timely manner, normally within just a few days. However, the volume of incoming reconsideration requests can vary considerably, hence we don’t provide a guaranteed turnaround time.
What are the possible outcomes of a reconsideration request?
Upon submitting a reconsideration request, you will first receive an automated confirmation in Google Webmaster Tools. After your request is processed, we’ll send you another message to let you know the outcome of the request. In most cases, this message will either inform you that the manual action has been revoked or that your site still violates our quality guidelines.
Where can I get more guidance?
For more information on reconsideration requests, please visit our Help Center. And as always, the Google Webmaster Forum is a great place for further discussions as well as seeking more advice from experienced webmasters and Google guides.
Written by Kaspar Szymanski and Uli Lutz, Search Quality Team
Verify your site in Webmaster Tools using Google Tag Manager
Webmaster level: Intermediate
If you use Google Tag Manager to add and update your site tags, now you can quickly and easily verify ownership of your site in Webmaster Tools using the container snippet code.
Here’s how it’s done:
1. On the Webmaster Tools home page, click Manage site for the site you’d like to verify, then select Verify this site. If you haven’t added the site yet, you can click the Add a site button in the top right corner.
To do this, you must have “View, Edit, and Manage” account level permissions in Google Tag Manager.
2. On the Verification page, select Google Tag Manager as the verification method and follow the steps on your screen.
3. Click Verify.
And you’re done!
If you’ve got any questions about this verification method, drop by the Webmaster Help Forum.
Posted by Mariya Moeva, Webmaster Trends Analyst
Changes in rankings of smartphone search results
Webmaster level: IntermediateSmartphone users are a significant and fast growing segment of Internet users, and at Google we want them to experience the full richness of the web. As part of our efforts to improve the mobile web, we published our recomm…
6 Quick Tips for International Websites
Note from the editors: After previously looking into various ways to handle internationalization for Google’s web-search, here’s a post from Google Web Studio team members with tips for web developers.
3. Use the
4. Use the
Many websites exist in more than one language, and more and more websites are made available for more than one language. Yet, building a website for more than one language doesn’t simply mean translation, or localization (L10N), and that’s it. It requires a few more things, all of which are related to internationalization (I18N). In this post we share a few tips for international websites.
1. Make pages I18N-ready in the markup, not the style sheets
Language and directionality are inherent to the contents of the document. If possible you should hence always use markup, not style sheets, for internationalization purposes. Use @lang and @dir, at least on the html element:
<html lang="ar" dir="rtl">
Avoid coming up with your own solutions like special classes or IDs.
As for I18N in style sheets, you can’t always rely on CSS: The CSS spec defines that conforming user agents may ignore properties like direction or unicode-bidi. (For XML, the situation changes again. XML doesn’t offer special internationalization markup, so here it’s advisable to use CSS.)
2. Use one style sheet for all locales
Instead of creating separate style sheets for LTR and RTL directionality, or even each language, bundle everything in one style sheet. That makes your internationalization rules much easier to understand and maintain.
So instead of embedding an alternative style sheet like
<link href="default.rtl.css" rel="stylesheet">
just use your existing
<link href="default.css" rel="stylesheet">
When taking this approach you’ll need to complement existing CSS rules by their international counterparts:
3. Use the [dir='rtl'] attribute selector
Since we recommend to stick with the style sheet you have (tip #2), you need a different way of selecting elements you need to style differently for the other directionality. As RTL contents require specific markup (tip #1), this should be easy: For most modern browsers, we can simply use [dir='rtl'].
Here’s an example:
aside {
float: right;
margin: 0 0 1em 1em;
}
[dir='rtl'] aside {
float: left;
margin: 0 1em 1em 0;
}4. Use the :lang() pseudo class
To target documents of a particular language, use the :lang() pseudo class. (Note that we’re talking documents here, not text snippets, as targeting snippets of a particular language makes things a little more complex.)
For example, if you discover that bold formatting doesn’t work very well for Chinese documents (which indeed it does not), use the following:
:lang(zh) strong,
:lang(zh) b {
font-weight: normal;
color: #900;
}5. Mirror left- and right-related values
When working with both LTR and RTL contents it’s important to mirror all the values that change directionality. Among the properties to watch out for is everything related to borders, margins, and paddings, but also position-related properties, float, or text-align.
For example, what’s text-align: left in LTR needs to be text-align: right in RTL.
There are tools to make it easy to “flip” directionality. One of them is CSSJanus, though it has been written for the “separate style sheet” realm, not the “same style sheet” one.
6. Keep an eye on the details
Watch out for the following items:
- Images designed for left or right, like arrows or backgrounds, light sources in
box-shadowandtext-shadow values, and JavaScript positioning and animations: These may require being swapped and accommodated for in the opposite directionality. - Font sizes and fonts, especially for non-Latin alphabets: Depending on the script and font, the default font size may be too small. Consider tweaking the size and, if necessary, the font.
- CSS specificity: When using the
[dir='rtl'](or[dir='ltr']) hook (tip #2), you’re using a selector of higher specificity. This can lead to issues. Just have an eye out, and adjust accordingly.
If you have any questions or feedback, check the Internationalization Webmaster Help Forum, or leave your comments here.
Written by Jens O. Meiert and Tony Ruscoe, Tech Leads, Google Web Studio
Getting started with structured data
Webmaster level: All
If Google understands your website’s content in a structured way, we can present that content more accurately and more attractively to Google users. For example, our algorithms can enhance your search results with “rich snippets” when we understand that your page is a structured product listing, event, recipe, review, or similar. We can also feature your data in Knowledge Graph panels or in Google Now cards, helping to spread the word about your content.
Today we’re excited to announce two features that make it simpler than ever before to participate in structured data features. The first is an expansion of Data Highlighter to seven new types of structured data. The second is a brand new tool, the Structured Data Markup Helper.
Support for Products, Businesses, Reviews and more in Data Highlighter
Data Highlighter launched in December 2012 as a point-and-click tool for teaching Google the pattern of structured data about events on your website — without even having to edit your site’s HTML. Now, you can also use Data Highlighter to teach us about many other kinds of structured data on your site: products, local businesses, articles, software applications, movies, restaurants, and TV episodes.
To get started, visit Webmaster Tools, select your site, click the “Optimization” link in the left sidebar, and click “Data Highlighter”. You’ll be prompted to enter the URL of a typically structured page on your site (for example, a product or event’s detail page) and “tag” its key fields with your mouse.
The tagging process takes about 5 minutes for a single page, or about 15 minutes for a pattern of consistently formatted pages. At the end of the process, you’ll have the chance to verify Google’s understanding of your structured data and, if it’s correct, “publish” it to Google. Then, as your site is recrawled over time, your site will become eligible for enhanced displays of information like prices, reviews, and ratings right in the Google search results.
New Structured Data Markup Helper tool
While Data Highlighter is a great way to quickly teach Google about your site’s structured data without having to edit your HTML, it’s ultimately preferable to embed structured data markup directly into your web pages, so your structured content is available to everyone. To assist web authors with that task, we’re happy to announce a new tool: the Structured Data Markup Helper.
Like in Data Highlighter, you start by submitting a web page (URL or HTML source) and using your mouse to “tag” the key properties of the relevant data type. When you’re done, the Structured Data Markup Helper generates sample HTML code with microdata markup included. This code can be downloaded and used as a guide as you implement structured data on your website.
The Structured Data Markup Helper supports a subset of data types, including all the types supported by Data Highlighter as well as several types used for embedding structured data in Gmail. Consult schema.org for complete schema documentation.
We hope these two tools make it easier for all websites to participate in Google’s growing suite of structured data features! As always, please post in our forums if you have any questions or feedback.
Posted by Justin Boyan, Product Manager
Using schema.org markup for organization logos
Webmaster level: all
Today, we’re launching support for the schema.org markup for organization logos, a way to connect your site with an iconic image. We want you to be able to specify which image we use as your logo in Google search results.
Using schema.org Organization markup, you can indicate to our algorithms the location of your preferred logo. For example, a business whose homepage is www.example.com can add the following markup using visible on-page elements on their homepage:
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
<a itemprop="url" href="http://www.example.com/">Home</a>
<img itemprop="logo" src="http://www.example.com/logo.png" />
</div>
This example indicates to Google that this image is designated as the organization’s logo image for the homepage also included in the markup, and, where possible, may be used in Google search results. Markup like this is a strong signal to our algorithms to show this image in preference over others, for example when we show Knowledge Graph on the right hand side based on users’ queries.
As always, please ask us in the Webmaster Help Forum if you have any questions.
Posted by RJ Ryan, Google Engineer
Introducing "x-default hreflang" for international landing pages
Webmaster Level: All
The homepages of multinational and multilingual websites are sometimes configured to point visitors to localized pages, either via redirects or by changing the content to reflect the user’s language. Today we’ll introduce a new rel-alternate-hreflang annotation that the webmaster can use to specify such homepages that is supported by both Google and Yandex.
To see this in action, let’s look at an example. The website example.com has content that targets users around the world as follows:
- http://example.com/en-gb: For English-speaking users in the UK
- http://example.com/en-us: For English-speaking users in the USA
- http://example.com/en-au: For English-speaking users in Australia
- http://example.com/: The homepage shows users a country selector and is the default page for users worldwide
In this case, the webmaster can annotate this cluster of pages using rel-alternate-hreflang using Sitemaps or using HTML link tags like this:
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-gb" hreflang="en-gb" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-us" hreflang="en-us" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-au" hreflang="en-au" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/" hreflang="x-default" />
The new x-default hreflang attribute value signals to our algorithms that this page doesn’t target any specific language or locale and is the default page when no other page is better suited. For example, it would be the page our algorithms try to show French-speaking searchers worldwide or English-speaking searchers on google.ca.
The same annotation applies for homepages that dynamically alter their contents based on a user’s perceived geolocation or the Accept-Language headers. The x-default hreflang value signals to our algorithms that such a page doesn’t target a specific language or locale.
As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please tell us in the Internationalization Webmaster Help Forum.
Posted by Pierre Far, Webmaster Trends Analyst
5 common mistakes with rel=canonical
Webmaster Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Including a rel=canonical link in your webpage is a strong hint to search engines your preferred version to index among duplicate pages on the web. It’s supported by several search engines, including Yahoo!, Bing, and Google. The rel=canonical link consolidates indexing properties from the duplicates, like their inbound links, as well as specifies which URL you’d like displayed in search results. However, rel=canonical can be a bit tricky because it’s not very obvious when there’s a misconfiguration.
While the webmaster sees the “red velvet” page on the left in their browser, search engines notice on the webmaster’s unintended “blue velvet” rel=canonical on the right.
We recommend the following best practices for using rel=canonical:
- A large portion of the duplicate page’s content should be present on the canonical version.
- Double-check that your rel=canonical target exists (it’s not an error or “soft 404”)
- Verify the rel=canonical target doesn’t contain a noindex robots meta tag
- Make sure you’d prefer the rel=canonical URL to be displayed in search results (rather than the duplicate URL)
- Include the rel=canonical link in either the <head> of the page or the HTTP header
- Specify no more than one rel=canonical for a page. When more than one is specified, all rel=canonicals will be ignored.
One test is to imagine you don’t understand the language of the content—if you placed the duplicate side-by-side with the canonical, does a very large percentage of the words of the duplicate page appear on the canonical page? If you need to speak the language to understand that the pages are similar; for example, if they’re only topically similar but not extremely close in exact words, the canonical designation might be disregarded by search engines.
Mistake 1: rel=canonical to the first page of a paginated series
Imagine that you have an article that spans several pages:
- example.com/article?story=cupcake-news&page=1
- example.com/article?story=cupcake-news&page=2
- and so on
Specifying a rel=canonical from page 2 (or any later page) to page 1 is not correct use of rel=canonical, as these are not duplicate pages. Using rel=canonical in this instance would result in the content on pages 2 and beyond not being indexed at all.
Good content (e.g., “cookies are superior nutrition” and “to vegetables”) is lost when specifying rel=canonical from component pages to the first page of a series.
In cases of paginated content, we recommend either a rel=canonical from component pages to a single-page version of the article, or to use rel=”prev” and rel=”next” pagination markup.
rel=canonical from component pages to the view-all page
If rel=canonical to a view-all page isn’t designated, paginated content can use rel=”prev” and rel=”next” markup.
Mistake 2: Absolute URLs mistakenly written as relative URLs
The <link> tag, like many HTML tags, accepts both relative and absolute URLs. Relative URLs include a path “relative” to the current page. For example, “images/cupcake.png” means “from the current directory go to the “images” subdirectory, then to cupcake.png.” Absolute URLs specify the full path—including the scheme like http://.
Specifying <link rel=canonical href=“example.com/cupcake.html” /> (a relative URL since there’s no “http://”) implies that the desired canonical URL is http://example.com/example.com/cupcake.html even though that is almost certainly not what was intended. In these cases, our algorithms may ignore the specified rel=canonical. Ultimately this means that whatever you had hoped to accomplish with this rel=canonical will not come to fruition.
Mistake 3: Unintended or multiple declarations of rel=canonical
Occasionally, we see rel=canonical designations that we believe are unintentional. In very rare circumstances we see simple typos, but more commonly a busy webmaster copies a page template without thinking to change the target of the rel=canonical. Now the site owner’s pages specify a rel=canonical to the template author’s site.
If you use a template, check that you didn’t also copy the rel=canonical specification.
Another issue is when pages include multiple rel=canonical links to different URLs. This happens frequently in conjunction with SEO plugins that often insert a default rel=canonical link, possibly unbeknownst to the webmaster who installed the plugin. In cases of multiple declarations of rel=canonical, Google will likely ignore all the rel=canonical hints. Any benefit that a legitimate rel=canonical might have offered will be lost.
In both these types of cases, double-checking the page’s source code will help correct the issue. Be sure to check the entire <head> section as the rel=canonical links may be spread apart.
Check the behavior of plugins by looking at the page’s source code.
Mistake 4: Category or landing page specifies rel=canonical to a featured article
Let’s say you run a site about desserts. Your dessert site has useful category pages like “pastry” and “gelato.” Each day the category pages feature a unique article. For instance, your pastry landing page might feature “red velvet cupcakes.” Because the “pastry” category page has nearly all the same content as the “red velvet cupcake” page, you add a rel=canonical from the category page to the featured individual article.
If we were to accept this rel=canonical, then your pastry category page would not appear in search results. That’s because the rel=canonical signals that you would prefer search engines display the canonical URL in place of the duplicate. However, if you want users to be able to find both the category page and featured article, it’s best to only have a self-referential rel=canonical on the category page, or none at all.
Remember that the canonical designation also implies the preferred display URL. Avoid adding a rel=canonical from a category or landing page to a featured article.
Mistake 5: rel=canonical in the <body>
The rel=canonical link tag should only appear in the <head> of an HTML document. Additionally, to avoid HTML parsing issues, it’s good to include the rel=canonical as early as possible in the <head>. When we encounter a rel=canonical designation in the <body>, it’s disregarded.
This is an easy mistake to correct. Simply double-check that your rel=canonical links are always in the <head> of your page, and as early as possible if you can.
rel=canonical designations in the <head> are processed, not the <body>.
Conclusion
To create valuable rel=canonical designations:
- Verify that most of the main text content of a duplicate page also appears in the canonical page.
- Check that rel=canonical is only specified once (if at all) and in the <head> of the page.
- Check that rel=canonical points to an existent URL with good content (i.e., not a 404, or worse, a soft 404).
- Avoid specifying rel=canonical from landing or category pages to featured articles as that will make the featured article the preferred URL in search results.
And, as always, please ask any questions in our Webmaster Help forum.
Written by Allan Scott, Software Engineer, Indexing Team
The Webmaster Academy goes international
Webmaster level: All
Since we launched the Webmaster Academy in English back in May 2012, its educational content has been viewed well over 1 million times.
The Webmaster Academy was built to guide webmasters in creating great sites that perform well in Google search results. It is an ideal guide for beginner webmasters but also a recommended read for experienced users who wish to learn more about advanced topics.
To support webmasters across the globe, we’re happy to announce that we’re launching the Webmaster Academy in 20 languages. So whether you speak Japanese or Italian, we hope we can help you to make even better websites! You can easily access it through Webmaster Central.
We’d love to read your comments here and invite you to join the discussion in the help forums.
Posted by Giacomo Gnecchi Ruscone, Search Quality
A new opt-out tool
Webmasters have several ways to keep their sites’ content out of Google’s search results. Today, as promised, we’re providing a way for websites to opt out of having their content that Google has crawled appear on Google Shopping, Advisor, Flights, Ho…
Easier management of website verifications
Webmaster level: All
To help webmasters manage the verified owners for their websites in Webmaster Tools, we’ve recently introduced three new features:
-
Verification details view: You can now see the methods used to verify an owner for your site. In the Manage owners page for your site, you can now find the new Verification details link. This screenshot shows the verification details of a user who is verified using both an HTML file uploaded to the site and a meta tag:
Where appropriate, the Verification details will have links to the correct URL on your site where the verification can be found to help you find it faster.
-
Requiring the verification method be removed from the site before unverifying an owner: You now need to remove the verification method from your site before unverifying an owner from Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools now checks the method that the owner used to verify ownership of the site, and will show an error message if the verification is still found. For example, this is the error message shown when an unverification was attempted while the DNS CNAME verification method was still found on the DNS records of the domain:
-
Shorter CNAME verification string: We’ve slightly modified the CNAME verification string to make it shorter to support a larger number of DNS providers. Some systems limit the number of characters that can be used in DNS records, which meant that some users were not able to use the CNAME verification method. We’ve now made the CNAME verification method have a fewer number of characters. Existing CNAME verifications will continue to be valid.
We hope this changes make it easier for you to use Webmaster Tools. As always, please post in our Verification forum if you have any questions or feedback.
Posted by Pierre Far, Webmaster Trends Analyst
Making search-friendly mobile websites — now in 11 more languages
Webmaster level: Intermediate
As more and more users worldwide with mobile devices access the Internet, it’s fantastic to see so many websites making their content accessible and useful for those devices. To help webmasters optimize their sites we launched our recommendations for smartphones, feature-phones, tablets, and Googlebot-friendly sites in June 2012.
We’re happy to announce that those recommendations are now also available in Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish. US-based webmasters are welcome to read the UK-English version.
We welcome you to go through our recommendations, pick the configuration that you feel will work best with your website, and get ready to jump on the mobile bandwagon!
Thanks to the fantastic webmaster-outreach team in Dublin, Tokyo and Beijing for making this possible!
Posted (but not translated) by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Zürich Switzerland
We created a first steps cheat sheet for friends & family
Webmaster level: beginner
Everyone knows someone who just set up their first blog on Blogger, installed WordPress for the first time or maybe who had a web site for some time but never gave search much thought. We came up with a first steps cheat sheet for just these folks. It’s a short how-to list with basic tips on search engine-friendly design, that can help Google and others better understand the content and increase your site’s visibility. We made sure it’s available in thirteen languages. Please feel free to read it, print it, share it, copy and distribute it!
We hope this content will help those who are just about to start their webmaster adventure or have so far not paid too much attention to search engine-friendly design. Over time as you gain experience you may want to have a look at our more advanced Google SEO Starter Guide. As always we welcome all webmasters and site owners, new and experienced to join discussions on our Google Webmaster Help Forum.
New first stop for hacked site recovery
Webmaster Level: All
We certainly hope you never have to use our new Help for hacked sites informational series. It’s a dozen articles and over an hour of videos dedicated to helping webmasters in the unfortunate event that their site is compromised.
Overview: How and why sites are hacked
If you have further interest in why cybercriminals hack sites for spammy purposes, see Tiffany Oberoi’s explanation in Step 5: Assess the damage (hacked with spam).
Tiffany Oberoi, a Webspam engineer, shares more information about sites hacked with spam
And if you’re curious about malware, Lucas Ballard from our Safe Browsing team, explains more about the topic in Step 5: Assess the damage (hacked with malware).
Lucas Ballard, a Safe Browsing engineer, and I pretend to have a totally natural conversation about malware
While we attempt to outline the necessary steps in recovery, each task remains fairly difficult for site owners unless they have advanced knowledge of system administrator commands and experience with source code. For helping fellow webmasters through the difficult recovery time, we’d like to thank the steady members in Webmaster Forum. Specifically, in the subforum Malware and hacked sites, we’d be remiss not to mention the amazing contributions of Redleg and Denis Sinegubko.
How to avoid ever needing Help for hacked sites
Just as you focus on making a site that’s good for users and search-engine friendly, keeping your site secure — for you and your visitors — is also paramount. When site owners fail to keep their site secure, hackers may exploit the vulnerability. If a hacker exploits a vulnerability, then you might need Help for hacked sites. So, to potentially avoid this scenario:
- Be vigilant about keeping software updated
- Understand the security practices of all applications, plugins, third-party software, etc., before you install them on your server. A security vulnerability in one software application can affect the safety of your entire site
- Remove unnecessary or unused software
- Enforce creation of strong passwords
- Keep all devices used to log in to your servers secure (updated operating system and browser)
- Make regular, automated backups of your site
Help for hacked sites can be found at www.google.com/webmasters/hacked. We look forward to not seeing you there!
Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead
A reminder about selling links that pass PageRank
Webmaster level: all
Google has said for years that selling links that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines. We continue to reiterate that guidance periodically to help remind site owners and webmasters of that policy.
Please be wary if some…
Make the most of Search Queries in Webmaster Tools
Level: Beginner to Intermediate
If you’re intrigued by the Search Queries feature in Webmaster Tools but aren’t sure how to make it actionable, we have a video that we hope will help!
Maile shares her approach to Search Queries in Webmaster Tools
This video explains the vocabulary of Search Queries, such as:
- Impressions
- Average position (only the top-ranking URL for the user’s query is factored in our calculation)
- Click
- CTR
The video also reviews an approach to investigating Top queries and Top pages:
- Prepare by understanding your website’s goals and your target audience (then using Search Queries “filters” to support your knowledge)
- Sort by clicks in Top queries to understand the top queries bringing searchers to your site (for the given time period)
- Sort by CTR to notice any missed opportunities
- Categorize queries into logical buckets that simplify tracking your progress and staying in touch with users’ needs
- Sort Top pages by clicks to find the URLs on your site most visited by searchers (for the given time period)
- Sort Top pages by impressions to find valuable pages that can be used to help feature your related, high-quality, but lower-ranking pages
After you’ve watched the video and applied the knowledge of your site with the findings from Search Queries, you’ll likely have several improvement ideas to help searchers find your site. If you’re up for it, let us know in the comments what Search Queries information you find useful (and why!), and of course, as always, feel free to share any tips or feedback.
Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead
A faster image search
Webmaster level: all
People looking for images on Google often want to browse through many images, looking both at the images and their metadata (detailed information about the images). Based on feedback from both users and webmasters, we redesigned Google Images to provide a better search experience. In the next few days, you’ll see image results displayed in an inline panel so it’s faster, more beautiful, and more reliable. You will be able to quickly flip through a set of images by using the keyboard. If you want to go back to browsing other search results, just scroll down and pick up right where you left off.
Here’s what it means for webmasters:
- We now display detailed information about the image (the metadata) right underneath the image in the search results, instead of redirecting users to a separate landing page.
- We’re featuring some key information much more prominently next to the image: the title of the page hosting the image, the domain name it comes from, and the image size.
- The domain name is now clickable, and we also added a new button to visit the page the image is hosted on. This means that there are now four clickable targets to the source page instead of just two. In our tests, we’ve seen a net increase in the average click-through rate to the hosting website.
- The source page will no longer load up in an iframe in the background of the image detail view. This speeds up the experience for users, reduces the load on the source website’s servers, and improves the accuracy of webmaster metrics such as pageviews. As usual, image search query data is available in Top Search Queries in Webmaster Tools.
As always, please ask on our Webmaster Help forum if you have questions.
Posted by Hongyi Li, Associate Product Manager
Webmaster Tools verification strategies
Webmaster level: all
Verifying ownership of your website is the first step towards using Google Webmaster Tools. To help you keep verification simple & reduce its maintenance to a minimum, especially when you have multiple people using Webmaster Tools, we’ve put together a small list of tips & tricks that we’d like to share with you:
- The method that you choose for verification is up to you, and may depend on your CMS & hosting providers. If you want to be sure that changes on your side don’t result in an accidental loss of the verification status, you may even want to consider using two methods in parallel.
- Back in 2009, we updated the format of the verification meta tag and file. If you’re still using the old format, we recommend moving to the newer version. The newer meta tag is called “google-site-verification, and the newer file format contains just one line with the file name. While we’re currently supporting ye olde format, using the newer one ensures that you’re good to go in the future.
- When removing users’ access in Webmaster Tools, remember to remove any active associated verification tokens (file, meta tag, etc.). Leaving them on your server means that these users would be able to gain access again at any time. You can view the site owners list in Webmaster Tools under Configuration / Users.
- If multiple people need to access the site, we recommend using the “add users” functionality in Webmaster Tools. This makes it easier for you to maintain the access control list without having to modify files or settings on your servers.
- Also, if multiple people from your organization need to use Webmaster Tools, it can be a good policy to only allow users with email addresses from your domain. By doing that, you can verify at a glance that only users from your company have access. Additionally, when employees leave, access to Webmaster Tools is automatically taken care of when that account is disabled.
- Consider using “restricted” (read-only) access where possible. Settings generally don’t need to be changed on a daily basis, and when they do need to be changed, it can be easier to document them if they have to go through a central account.
We hope these tips help you to simplify the situation around verification of your website in Webmaster Tools. For more questions about verification, feel free to drop by our Webmaster Help Forums.
Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Zurich
