Archive for March, 2008
Yahoo directory submission Is it Worth 299$
Everyone knows yahoo directory charges 299$ for regular site submission for a year and Adult sites it costs 600$. This is huge compared to what other paid directories are charging out there. So is it worth it? I recommend an Yes and a No
YES if your site a well established site and want to improve your yahoo search engine exposure to the maximum
YES if you are looking to spend money on a good paid directory. You can’t find a better paid directory than yahoo out there.
YES if you want google to treat you better, Both Google and Yahoo consider a yahoo directory listing an authority backlink since all sites listed in it are subject to manual review.
YES if get a good category to list your site listing your site 10 levels deep is not the greatest thing to do when submitting to a directory.
YES if you have an adult site and need a quality backlink. I dont think many sites appreciate adult sites other than yahoo directory.
YES if you want yahoo LOVE , they love your site if you pay them 299$
NO if you are a small Mom and Pop business and have limited budget on online business
NO if you have good cheap alternatives for backlinks
NO the sky will not fall and you can always have good rankings even if you dont have a yahoo directory listing.
NO if you don’t want editorial review of your site sometimes if your site is too spammy with too many affiliate links they will ban your site in the main index.
That is all I can think of for now
Search Engine Genie SEO Blog Team,
Checking backlinks in yahoo similar to google webmaster tools backlinks download
Many asked us whether we have an alternative for Google’s webmaster tools backlink tool where we can see atleast 30 to 40% of the links a site has. From what have seen no you cannot see more than 1000 backlinks in yahoo. Probably if they add a platform like google to validate a site and download backlinks as a CSV in future it will be great. But till now by far the only search engine that is even close to showing something accurate for a site is yahoo. We have not seen any other search engine show as accurate backlinks data as google. There are different methods to check backlinks in yahoo. We had an article written couple of years back based on this. Please read it here http://www.searchenginegenie.com/backlink-strategies.htm
Open Warning to content thiefs and copyright violators
Search Engine Genie Blog Team,
MSN Crawler improved crawling activity on our website – MSN search engine crawler
Recently MSN Live Search crawler bot is hitting us hard its most probably because we are working hard on unique contents on our site, as well as the tools, blogs etc. We are getting lot of new natural backlinks and this could be an important reason we are seeing increased crawler activity from all the crawlers.
Also our SEO forum has started to pick up we have seen some new posters become regular in our forum they have posted some interesting postings. Also we have started 5 new blogs A web design blog, PPC blog, Link building blog, Programming blog, personal company blog etc.
Also we have a new search engine experts directory where listing your site is for totally free even you can include your phone numbers and email IDs. Only adding active URLs are chargeable its just launched with about 60 profiles are existing search engine experts.
Our Chief technical Officer who goes by the name Tara has started a blog on our own and she will be sharing her personal thoughts from tomorrow,
Also we are launching our newsletter from this month and we are accepting subscriptions from tomorrow, there are ton of new things coming to our website. This is just an effort to catch up to our competitors.
Keep visiting our site to see great new innovative things coming up,
Good day
Search Engine Genie Blog Team,
Searching US specific results from other countries –
US results in other countries:
I know many of you have this question especially webmasters and siteowners from other countries doing business with US clients. For us though we have a sales office in CA, US our development team works from india but our 100% our client base is US. We need to target US customers only and for this we need to make sure have best results in US search engines.
Even if you search google.com from here you won’t have the best results delivered there will be some geotargeting jumping in based on your IP. So to tackle that we need to find other ways. I can list few of the ways we know of and which we use internally use to check our sites as well as our client sites from US pages.
1. Adding &gl=us to the URL works sometimes. But even if you add this if your IP of your internet service provider is country specific then the result still wont be as accurate as it is served in the US states. SO this will kind of work and worth the try.
2. Using the Google adwords https://adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool this too works sometimes but it delivers results the same way as the above option it also detects the IP and doesnt give the best results and results are not always similar to the US results.
3. A VPN with US Ip works better we have some VPN connects with some client’s offices and we get US Ip where we browse to get exact US based results.
4. Last but not the least the best option infact the option we most use is a US proxy. There are some very good US proxies like
http://www.megaproxy.com/
http://www.hidemyass.com/
http://www.clickgo.info/
http://www.fastwebproxy.net/ etc
They are mostly US proxies and what they see in US is what you see in your country. I recommend using one of those proxies to check results in US,
Google friends can sell paid anchor text links on their sites
When we listened to the live webmaster central live chat which happened on friday they were so tough on sites that are selling links. Also they have a link in webmaster tools to report paid links. Plus they have a good written explanation here.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736
According to that document:
“Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results. Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the tag Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt fileGoogle works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We’ll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.”
Infact they did mention in their LIVE chat that sites which sell links will be penalized. Ok now when we go to the official google blog here http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ we can see that few of the sites listed here do sell lot of text based links on their site. Though they nofollow those links I feel linking to those sites means they support those sites.
So can we assume that google’s friends can sell links. I don’t want to rant and I can understand they don’t have control over it but still they link to sites which sell links and this is like endorsing those site’s Search Engine Spamming efforts. So I feel best way to sell links on your site is to go to Search Conferences make friends with Google Employees and sell links safely on our sites with Google’s direct approval.
Bad hosting companies bad for SEO – Web hosting companies
We get questions from users asking whether where we host our website plays a role in search engines. Our answer is yes there are lot of factors when it comes to ranking in search engines and a problem with a hosting company will be an other important factor.
Here are some reasons why you should select a good host.
1. Downtime: Make sure you get the best uptime not just by guarantee but by testimonials of other companies of the hosting company you want to host. We have seen most of the web hosting companies promise 99.9% uptime but a lot of them never keep up that promise. If the site goes down you have to keep going behind them and finally if there is a major fault you site might takes about 3 or 4 days which is a massive negative effect on your site. A long downtime affects your repeated customers if they are regular to your website and find you site is down for a long period eventually they will never return back which is not good for sites which depends on repeated traffic. A long downtime also affects search engine crawling googlebot and other major crawlers are programmed to visit big high quality sites on a repeated trip which varies from inbetween few hours a day to once a day to once in couple of days. If the Search engine crawlers cant crawl the site even after repeated attempts they might boot your site out of index for a short while eventually it will come back but the risk of loosing precious ranking is not good.
Also its not about repeated visitors also first time visitors will be badly affected if you have a bad hosting company and suffer a long term downtime impact in search engines. Imagine potential customers click on a search result and see that your site doesn’t exist they will never come to your again.
Bad DNS resolving: I have seem some hosting companies suffer from bad DNS resolving. If the DNS resolving is not good search engine crawlers will have trouble accessing your site from some of their datacenters and a bad crawl will affect your site. A bad crawl is bad for SEO since your site should have good credible crawling capabilities for the crawlers to visit regularly and inaccessible pages on your site due to DNS problem will result in bad distribution of link juice which will cause loss of internal link popularity.
Banned IPs hosting: There are millions websites which share hosting on same Ips with other websites. Though this is a natural phenomenon sharing an IPs with too much banned websites / spam websites / adult websites will hurt your site. There is a limit no-one can prevent a bad site from being in a shared IP but imagine 60% of all websites hosted on your IP are spamming the search engines then your site will be considered part of it and this will loose your credibility with search engine algorithms.
Shared IPs: As mentioned in the above post shared Ips sometimes hurt best solution is dedicated IP but if you cant afford dedicated Ips research more on the host an if their shared IPs are fine go ahead and host.
Hosting company Search engine rankings: If you are search engine user and looking for a web host mostly you will use search. Most of the time sites that rank in top will have good credibility since they should have worked really hard to reach what they are right now.
Mod_rewrite: Though rewriting is not important now a rewrite to the dynamic URls will make search engines job easier and your users will remember URLs better. I recommend check your host first to make sure they offer good URL writing whether its PHP, or Perl or ASP
There are other factors too but above are important and can be researched before buying with a hosting company,
Google Made us turn off our lights – Earth Hour 2008
We never heard or know anything about Earth hour unless we noticed the Homepage of google. When we saw the new darkend homepage and followed the link from it we were able to understand the importance of spending time with nature for atleast an hour. Yesterday we had some employees working even due to weekend and we turned off all the lights including Air conditioners to make sure we support a good cause.
We all know google always support good causes. Global warming is threatening the very existence for the world we live in and its important everyone realizes how important its to reduce the pollution we inflict on Mother nature so that it doesn’t backfire us through Climate changes and Global warming.
We thank Google wholeheartedly for helping us understand a good cause.
Google Webmaster Central Live chat – Full Raw chat log – Chat log on SEO related discussion
Google webmaster central live chat log full unedited version.
Please read the log here,
Update Full Raw Unedited version of Audio transcript.
We are now posting the full chat log which we were able to save during the live chat conversation between Google’s Search quality / webmaster central engineers and webmasters around the world. It was very interesting session and this is the first time in the history of Search engines did we see live online chat between a search engine company and the webmasters.
This is a raw chat log we never had time to clean it due to weekend. In the coming week we will able to select the best answers from this and will be posting in a separate blog posting till that time enjoy reading this log its interesting. We have some very good industry experts comment in this LOG apart from Google’s panelists.
Already we posted the full text based Question and Answer Session here
Please read the log here.
We are preparing the transcript from the 90 minutes audio its gonna take time, we will also post the full audio though its not of the best quality. 🙂
150 Questions answered by Google Webmaster Central Team
Google Answers 150 questions in today’s live chat session between Google’s webmaster central search quality team and webmasters around the world.
Google panelists had celebrity Googlers like MattCutts, Adam Lasik other panelists are Evan , Jessica, John Mueller, Jonathan Simon, Liza, Maile Oye, Mariya, MattD
Ramya, Ried, Susan, Wynz.
Text Based Question and Answer session happened between Google’s expert panelists and
Webmasters, This is a raw unedited conversation to make it more accurate. There
are some casual conversations please ignore them.
UPDATE: Raw Live casual chat Log Posted here
Update: Raw Unedited version of Full Audio transcript posted here
Document Prepared by Search Engine Genie Team
- Webmaster (Rahul Doshi ): what is the process?
- Google Expert (MattD) : :
Rahul, You will want to log out completely
and back in. If you end up not getting onto the call, you should still be
able to follow along in the chat windows. - Webmaster (Gabe) :
What is the criteria for getting the ‘more results’ for the 1st search result?
It’s not just appearing first and having a sitemap recognized by Google because
I’ve seen both for a given site with no ‘more results’, so what is it? - Google Expert (MattD) : : Gabe, are
you talking about Sitelinks? - Webmaster (Laurent):
About SiteLinks, what would be your advice to get results appear. I see them
in the GWC, but not in SERPS - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=47334
- Webmaster (Gabe):
The first result returning specific sitelinks below just after ‘more results’. - Google Expert (MattD) : : Gabe, Sitelinks
are purely algorithmic, you can find some more information here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47334 - Webmaster (Linda Farm):
Is Website Tools verifying site not working? i’ve tried verifying my site
and it just doesn’t work - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Linda, the
team is working on something with verification, it seems to be affecting some
sites. - Webmaster (Cassiano Travareli):
I wanna know about social media optimization! what is the Google opinion about
that? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Social media
is a great way of attracting relevant visitors! - Webmaster (Mark Kaufman):
Would you recommend no following the sorting links? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Mark, if those
links lead to duplicate content, you can either add a nofollow to the links
or block indexing through meta tags or a robots.txt entry. - Webmaster (erik) : One of my clients has a thumbnail next to their serp result instead of the
sitelinks that were there before….what gives? - Google Expert (MattD) : : erik, Sitelinks
and Universal Search results are query-specific. - Webmaster (Terence):
If RSS feeds have near identical content as HTML pages, might that cause duplicate
content penalties? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : RSS feeds
do not need to be indexed, you can block indexing through your robots.txt - Webmaster (ali merchant):
how does the search engine treat an https (secure) page versus an http - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Ali, we treat
https the same as http — however, https puts a bigger load on your server,
so you might want to check that it can handle it on your side. - Webmaster (Mark Kaufman) :
Kind of depends on what duplicate content means — if the sort is different
on a results screen, different products/items will appear on a given page…but
overall it’s the same set of products as the default sort. - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Mark, if the
content is generally the same but just in a different order, I don’t think
it would provide much original value in the search results for the user. - Webmaster (Carlos) :
We are a comparison shopping website, healthpricer.com, and we power the ecommerce
section of 4 different sites, i.e. marketplace.healthcentral.com those sites
have identical content to our main site, can this get me penalized? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Unfortunately
we can’t do individual reviews for every site, but you could start here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359 - Webmaster (Terence) :
Confusion about robots.txt vs rel=nofollow. I don’t want to pass PageRank
to my Privacy Policy. Suppose I already blocked /privacy/ in my robots.txt.
Do I also have to use rel=nofollow when linking internally to /privacy/ to
prevent the pass of PageRank? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Pages that
are blocked by robots.txt can still have and pass PageRank, so if you don’t
want that page to get PageRank from your Privacy Policy page, you should nofollow
that link. - Webmaster (Terence):
Confusion about robots.txt vs rel=nofollow. I don’t want to pass PageRank
to my Privacy Policy. Suppose I already blocked /privacy/ in my robots.txt.
Do I also have to use rel=nofollow when linking internally to /privacy/ to
prevent the pass of PageRank? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Pages that
are blocked by robots.txt can still have and pass PageRank, so if you don’t
want that page to get PageRank from your Privacy Policy page, you should nofollow
that link. - Webmaster (dockarl) :
Why’s he using ALT TEXT on text at the bottom of his site – is that wrong?
LearningGuitars.com - Google Expert (Evan) : : Hi Dockarl,
the site Wysz was talking about was learningguitarnow.com - Webmaster (erik) :
my client has the same issue as this: search for buzznet.com in google and
you’ll see the same thing - Google Expert (MattD) : : Thanks for
the example erik. This site is triggering an image as a Universal result.
Both Universal and Sitelinks are determined algorithmically, so you can’t
opt-in to either. You can opt out of Sitelinks in Webmaster Tools if that
helps the situation. - Webmaster (Andrew) :
What are your views on image replacement versus using alt= on an image. Is
it a bad thing if used legitimately? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : There are
many high-quality sites that use image replacement techniques (such as Fahrner
image replacement) to provide a better user experience. If you’re using this
technique in a legitimate way to benefit your users, you shouldn’t have problems. - Webmaster (Nancy) :
Any chance that Google will develop its own directory that folks can directly
submit their website to? - Google Expert (Evan) : : Hi Nancy,
we use the ODP (open directory project), to learn more go to dmoz.org - Webmaster (Mark Kaufman) :
Can I ask a video sitemap question? We submitted a video sitemap back on Feb
19th. In Webmaster Tools, total URL is 11k, but Indexed URLs are 0. Of the
115 sitemaps off the index, 2 have warnings. Do video sitemaps just take a
long time to get indexed? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Video sitemaps
take some time to get approved — it can take up to 2-3 months. - Webmaster (Jaan Kanellis) :
So duplicate content can cause page rank issues? I thought you were able to
filter duplicate content? - Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : If you have
multiple URLs for the same content within your site, each URL could be attracting
it’s own links. It would be better to instead have one page for everyone to
link to thus consolidating the value of all the external links. - Webmaster (Gary Carpenter) :
I setup a webmaster account an submitted my url. I also setup a Sitemap.xml
file. Google reports that the url is indexed and the Sitemap file is OK yet
when I google search my url the result is “No Documents Found”.
What have I done wrong??? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : It can take
a bit for sites to get indexed, you might want to post in the webmaster help
groups for detailed suggestions. - Webmaster (Korpis, LLC) :
Would there be a problem with doing a large number of 301 redirects at once? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : I would recommend
against doing “chained” redirects (a page redirects multiple times). - Webmaster (Kevin Rogers) :
For the Guitar lesson site, should they 301 the learnguitarnow.com/index.shtml
page to learnguitarnow.com? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If that URL
is not linked, it should not need to be redirected. If it’s linked, it would
be best to remove the links, a 301 could help to speed up the removal. - Webmaster (Laurent) :
I see nofollow links in my GWC. Why is that ? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : That’s by
design. - Webmaster (Hasit Ruparel) :
I have alread reviewed that, however I have problems in which my websites
are not considered for higher ranking, ever after following all the steps
on http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : You might
want to post about it in detail in the help groups. - Webmaster (Terence) :
Thanks Susan, but I’m actually asking about internal links pointing *to* /privacy/,
not links from /privacy/. Will internal links pass PR to /privacy/ even if
/privacy/ is blocked by robots.txt? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Yes.
- Webmaster (Scott) :
what site is he talking about now? - Google Expert (Jessica) : : Hi, Thanks
for your question. We’re now discussing images in Google Search results - Webmaster (Jaan Kanellis) :
Also can we get any comments on paid link re-inclusion process? Once the paid
links are removed is the next step Google re-inclusion through Google Webmaster
Tools? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Yes, a reconsideration
request is the next logical step once everything is cleaned up. Please include
all details in your request so that we can handle it appropriately. - Webmaster (Allison Kulage) :
Related to the robots.txt issue – if you’ve placed a no robots tag on every
page of a site and a disallow for all in the robots.txt file, but the home
page still shows up in the top 10 for a competitive keyword, how else can
you get the site removed? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you are
blocking crawling with robots.txt, we won’t be able to see the robots meta
tag. If you want the URL removed, it would be better to allow crawling (not
block it in a robots.txt) so that the meta tag can be read. - Webmaster (Raffi) :
would you suggest subdomains or folders for state specific content for a US
site? i.e. az.domain.com or www.domain.com/az ? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Both work.
- Webmaster (Cassiano Travareli) :
i wanna know about duplicate content inside blogs. about categories, archives,
authors, have the same content of the article. in my web pages i am blocking
using robots txt, i blocked categories and archives. is it good? - Google expert (MattD) : : Cassiano, If your content is the original, I wouldn’t recommend
blocking it. If you have content fed in from another site, it might be smart
to use robots.txt as you’ve said. I’d recommend taking your site to the Webmaster
Help Group as well. - Webmaster (Terence) :
What are the benefits of submitting a sitemap if our site is already crawled
well by Google? In other words, what are we missing out if we don’t submit
a sitemap? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : By submitting
a Sitemap we see which URLs have been added and changed. We can crawl those
earlier than if we had to accidentally “stumble” upon them. - Webmaster (Jaan Kanellis) :
Lastly can we download this cat log? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : You should
be able to use File – Save to save this log. - Webmaster (Rob) :
Is there any major issue with using CMS, e.g. Joomla? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If the CMS
is compliant with the normal web standard it should be no problem. However,
each tool is only as strong as the person using it — all CMS can create great
sites and they can create bad sites. - Google Expert 2 (MattD) : : Rob, from personal experience, CMS packages are great, though
you will want to make sure you customize the templates and page titles so
your snippets are unique. - Webmaster (Phil Peterman) :
I was hoping y’all would address the use of display:none and some basic guidelines
for it’s use - Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : As long as
the use of display:none is not abused to selectively hide content from site
visitors while at the same time showing it to search engine crawlers, it should
fine to use this. - Webmaster (Gijs Nelissen) :
are you recording this conference for later reference ? i missed some of the
advice on my website (digitalbase.eu). - Google Expert (Adam Lasnik) : : Hi Gijs, we
weren’t able to record the audio, unfortunately, but I believe at least one
blogger was doing a transcript 🙂 ( Ofcourse we did 🙂 ) - Webmaster (Jonatas Leonel) :
So, how google see websites what receive a lot of good links, by natural way
but use rel=”nofollow” in all of its external links? - Google Expert (Evan) : : Hi Jonatas,
could you clarify? Good Site A links to Good Site B, and Good Site B has rel=”nofollow”
links? - Webmaster (Ian M) :
Will Google provide audio and text of this chat after? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : We’ll do our
best to put this content online, though I’m not yet sure in what format. - Webmaster (Leslie Ding) :
Regarding subdomains, I understand google can determine country codes from
the URL, e.g. jp.mysite.com. What about japan.mysite.com? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : No those are
not recognized automatically. You can however use Webmaster Tools to set geotargeting
for it. - Webmaster (Hasit Ruparel) :
Thanks for the reply John, do you know which is the BEST place to post any
problem? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help/topics?start=
is where the official Webmaster Help group is located. - Webmaster (Raffi) :
John, I work for a site where I think a competitor is trying to buy links
“for us” to try and get your google bomb algo to kick in…what
can I do about this? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : That’s generally
no problem as we always look at the bigger picture and try to assess the intent. - Webmaster (John) :
One or two panelist mentioned they were part of the google health team, but
I did not catch their names? - Google Expert (Adam Lasnik) : : Hi John, nope,
sorry, we must not have spoken clearly… — we’re all in Search Quality,
not Health - Webmaster (ParksC) :
With regards to the paid links question above about asking for inclusion,
would it be the same to nofollow the paid links instead of just having them
removed? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Yes, if you
had paid links and added rel=nofollow to them, you can explain that in your
reconsideration request. - Webmaster (Nancy) :
Yes, I’ve been trying for 2 years to get a listing, but there is no editor
for my category… so things have been slow. I guess I thought that Google
might be a bit quicker in adding entries. That said, I’ve had good luck in
getting my site listed. - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : It sounds
like you’re talking about Google Directory, which our team doesn’t really
work with. If you’re referring to Google search results, there isn’t an “editor”
process to get in. Check out our Webmaster Guidelines for help getting into
search results. - Webmaster (Terence) :
We have a regional sudomain, canada.domain.com (we don’t have domain.ca).
We set the geo location to Canada in Google Webmaster Tools a few weeks ago,
but site is still not indexed as a Canadian site. How long does it take? Any
other steps we should take? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : This can take
some time to take affect. If the setting is set, you should be fine in the
long run. - Webmaster (Terence) :
Does Google rank “static” URLs better than dynamic URLs? Ex. /q-digital-camera.html
vs /search?q=digital+camera - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : There’s no
preference. - Webmaster (paavan) :
When can available option pay per call in India - Google Expert (ramya) : : You can post
your question with respect to Pay per call on http://groups.google.com/group/adwords-help,they
should be able to help you better - Webmaster (Jeremy Rivera) :
Will Universal Image search results REPLACE links to sites? I.e. Instead of
10 sites plus images, will we see 1 image, 1 video and 8 sites? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : We’re constantly
testing what works well in our search results, including whether differently
types of universal results are “additive” or will replace one of
the 10 web results. For now I’d say, stay tuned. 🙂 - Webmaster (Richard Hearne) :
Is there any process for confirming a TBPR penalty? Working with authority
site which recently went PR7 -> PR3 - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you know
that the site did not comply with the webmaster guidelines, you can clean
that up and file a reconsideration request. - Webmaster (webado – Christina) :
I don’t know where I can ask my question if I may even – down here or up there
or nowhere ? - Google expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Down here!
- Webmaster (paavan) :
thanks - Google Expert (ramya) : : Thanks for
the question Paavan 🙂 - Webmaster (jtbandes) :
How about <meta name=”keywords”>? Worth it? Or just let the
search engines get it from the content? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : We do not
read the keywords meta tag — but if you want to use it for yourself, feel
free to keep them. - Webmaster (Amit Agarwal) :
One of my sites was severely penalized in Google though it respects all the
guidelines. I filed a reconsideration request and it was quicklrestored though
I didn’t change anything at my end. The problem has happened thrice in 3 months..
Can I prevent this ? - Google Expert (MattD) : : Amit, reconsideration
requests are the right path. You may want to set up a Webmaster Tools account
to check the message center if you haven’t already. - Webmaster (Tom Smith) :
Our site is CSS based, content pages are hierarchy based, using 2 <h1>
tags, 2 <h2> tags and then <h3> tags for additional content sections
to organize content sections. Will we be penalized using this approach? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : That’s a great
way to provide context to your content. Keep it up! - Webmaster (Andrew Delamarter) :
Is it possible sap.com is being penalized on Google.com by the geo-relevancy
component due to the site being hosted on servers in germany, japan, and the
US? Load balancing determines which data center handles the session. - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : By setting
the geotargeting in webmaster tools the server location will be less of an
impact. We understand the need for load sharing across locations. - Webmaster (ali merchant ) :
Concerned about div tags. Any harm if they are used as a space saving technique
and used completely legitmately - Google Expert (MattD) : : ali, There
should be no harm in extra div tags if they are being used legitimately. Let
me know if this doesn’t answer the question. - Webmaster (webado – Christina) :
OK here goes. This site melinas-music.com – starts out with an optional flash
splash page which redirects (in flash) to the proper homepage which with js
on is a /home/. With js off you dont’ get the splash flash and the page displayed
at the root url - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : That should
not be a problem :-). - Webmaster (webado – Christina) :
is the same as would be at /hom/ which is not accessible except though js. - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If users can
link to it, they probably will sooner or later. In general it’s no problem
if it’s just a duplicate. - Webmaster (Christi) :
Should we use alt and title tags, or just alt tags, on images? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : You can use
both, since the title tag is shown as a tool tip in Firefox, but the alt text
is more of a replacement for the image — they’re two different things, which
can be used at the same time. - Webmaster (Jaan Kanellis) :
John can you confirm that www.websitehostdirectory.com has been hit with a
paid link penalty? So I can remove them and do a re-inclusion? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Hi Jaan, we
can’t discuss individual sites here, but you may try the experts in the Google
Webmaster Help groups. - Webmaster (Alan Rothstein) :
What about the image enhancement function in Google Webmaster Tools, how does
this help? - Google Expert (MattD) : : Maile is answering
you right now. No automatic boost, but a program to help us understand images
better. 🙂 - Webmaster (Gary Campbell) :
For top menus displayed on all pages, we load the CSS menu at the end of the
page in a hidden div and set to the proper div after loading for help search
engines not see the common content first. Is this OK ? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : That’s fine,
if it works for the users and if the content shown / hidden is not misleading
to search engines. - Webmaster (Gary Carpenter) :
where do I access webmaster help groups - Google Expert (Adam Lasnik) : : These are
linked from www.google.com/webmasters - Webmaster (Allison Kulage):
Should you only submit for re-inclusion if your site has been completely banned
from the index? or can you submit if you’ve seen a huge drop in rankings but
you’re still in the index? What if only a few pages got dropped? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : You can request
reconsideration at any time, if you’ve seen a sudden and significant change
in your site’s performance. - Webmaster (Mark Kaufman) :
Does using an image caching/delivery network, like Akamaii, where the host
domain of the image is different than the web page, a problem for Google image
search? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : The host domain
does not have to be the same as the web page – it’ll still be indexed in the
context of the web page. - Webmaster (Korpis, LLC) :
Does google better understand a page if the url contains the major keywords
the page is about? - Google Expert (Evan) : : If the subject
of the page is already adequately covered, then search engines will understand.
Having the keywords in the URL will help your users understand what to expect
on the page. - Webmaster (Leslie Ding) :
I noticed that in Google News, the thumbnail is from a different site to the
news content. How does Google determine what image thumbnail is paired with
a google news entry? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Google News
has a completely different setup than normal web search. The help center has
more information on Google news and News Sitemap files. - Webmaster (Mark) :
Our site has a number of categories and within each category products are
shown 9 thumbnails at a time. It seems that our category names come up great
in the search results, but products below the first nine in a category do
not appear well. - Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : I’ve seen
similar situations as this where the problem turned out to be how the product
pages were linked using a Javascript method instead of a standard HREF link.
Another thing to consider is if the product pages have unique content..check
web for dups - Webmaster (Gary Campbell) :
I mean, we load menus at end of page, move to top of page via script. Is this
OK ? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Should be
ok, if it’s not misleading. - Webmaster (Charlie) :
Should I rather have HTML drop downs to all the 50 categories on my website,
or should i rather have the top 5 category links on my front page - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : I’d recommend
thinking about it from a user perspective. If you were a new visitor to your
site, which method of organization would be easier for you to use? - Webmaster (webado – Christina) :
the page at /home/ is kept out of the index - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : that should
be ok. - Webmaster (Brian Harnish) :
Does Google have plans to include programming algorithms that provide higher
results for W3C standards-compliant sites as well as great content? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If your site
has compliant code then that could increase your number of happy visitors
— which could in turn help your site across the board. - Webmaster (Gijs Nelissen) :
are we able to listen to a recording of this conference ? - Google Expert (Evan) : : Unfortunately
we do not have an audio recording of this chat. There should be some people
blogging about it ;). - Webmaster (ali merchant) :
can subdomains increase my visibility - Google Expert (MattD): : ali, pages
on subdomains should not increase visibility any more than pages on subdirectories.
It’s more of an organization (and sometimes navigation) preference. - Webmaster (Felipe Miyata) :
does a noindex, follow page pass pagerank? - Google Expert (Evan) : : Noindex pages
accrue Google PR, and can pass Google PR – even though as a page in its own
right, it does not exist in the SERP’s– a good use for this would be pages such as sitemaps that you don’t want
to appear in the SERP’s, but that you want to accrue - Webmaster (Allison Kulage) :
If there’s a paid links penalty, what’s to stop my competition from buying
paid links to get my site penalized? And, many of the top rankings sites for
a client of mine are breaking all the paid link rules. How are they ranking
and my site isn’t? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you feel
that a different site is buying / selling links, you can report that in WEbmaster
Tools. This helps us fine-tune our algorithms. In the end, we will take a
look at the broader picture. - Webmaster (Terence) :
We have a very large site with tons of dynamically created pages (like user
generated content). We notice that Googlebot’s crawl rate fluctuates a lot.
Any tips on increasing Googlebot’s crawl rate? Crawl rate is already set to
Fast in Webmaster Tools - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : One thing
I’d recommend is to try to limit any duplicate URLs on your site. E.g. if
we’re crawling the same content under more than one URL, we’re “wasting”
some of our bandwidth on that when we could instead be crawling new and unique
content on your site - Webmaster (Andrew Shell) :
Is there an difference in indexation for http vs https pages? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : No – both
are fine. - Webmaster (webado – Christina) :
i have been scrambling my brains to find a better way to transition without
visible query string parameters - Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : You might
want to consider using hidden HTML input fields - Webmaster (Richard Hearne) :
Follow-up. We haven’t made a full analysis, but we want to confirm the penalty
first. No lnown contravention od TOS, but initial thoughts are that some external
linking may have been viewed as paid while they are not. - Google Expert (MattD) : : Richard,
doesn’t look like we have time to do any more individual site analyses, but
if you suspect a penalty, I’d recommend submitting a reconsideration request
or visiting our Webmsater Help Group. - Webmaster (Charlie) :
Should I rather have HTML drop downs to all the 50 categories on my website,
or should i rather have the top 5 category links on my front page - Google Expert (John Mueller): : I would try
to limit the number of links to less than 100 per page — if you can make
50 links more usable to your user than 5, it can be good for your site in
general. - Webmaster (Alan Rothstein) :
Do domains (with a 7 year history but has been redirected for 2 years) keep
bad neighborhood links and ip penalties when they switch owners? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you buy
a domain which you suspect has a bad history, you can file a reconsideration
request detailing the new ownership. - Webmaster (Aaron Chronister) :
Site penalized, not ranking for company name. Buying links I was the only
thing I did b/c everyone else was. Not anymore. How do I fix?? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you can
get those links removed or if you can add a rel=nofollow to them that would
be a good idea. Once you have cleaned up as much as possible, filing a reconsideration
request would be a good next step. - Webmaster (Anderson):
Site A has a link with nofollow to site B, will google visit site B by this
link? - Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : No, but keep
in mind there may be other links out there pointing to site B - Webmaster (Mark) :
If multiple keywords are used in a url is it better to separate with an underscore,
dash or does it matter? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : It doesn’t
really matter. - Webmaster (Amit Agarwal) :
Thanks MattD – I have a Webmaster account and I use that for sending reconsideration
request. I am worried because the site gets penalized too frequently (once
per month) – There are no warnings or messages in the Webmaster Message center. - Google Expert (MattD) : : Amit, since
we’re getting toward the end, I’d recommend taking your site to the Webmaster
Help Group. The community there is awesome. It seems like this may just be
normal algorithmic fluctuations as opposed to penalties. - Webmaster (Swaroop) :
Can you tell us about the pro’s & con’s if we use the shortened URL’s
using TinyUrl or some other similar service.? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Shortened
URLs are often not as descriptive, which might make it harder for users to
recognize the content that is behind them. For us it’s generally not a problem,
as long as the content is available normally. - Webmaster (Jacob Weiss) :
I wouldn’t feel comfortable posting my url in a public chatroom so all my
competitors can see the issues we have, is there a way to disguise the url
so only Gogglers can see it? - Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : You can send
me the question directly…:) - Webmaster (Nagaraju) :
what is the typical google index rate for urls in sitemap. If I introduce
about 30000 new urls today, when can I reasonably expect those to be indexed
( assuming I’m at medium crawl rate and the site performance is good) - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : There’s no
guarantee for crawling and indexing of Sitemap URLs. There are many factors
that play a role in that. - Webmaster (erik) :
when is google going to get better at finding good videos that are not in
youtube - Google Expert (Evan) : : Google is
constantly working on improving search. - Webmaster (Gary Campbell) :
webtrain.com/solutions-business-meetings.asp – it uses the move approach to
help SEO focus on the unique content. - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Hi Gary,
we can’t comment on individual sites here, but you can post about it in the
groups. - Webmaster (Gary Campbell) :
also, we compete against webex – wish you could use us - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Send us your
info! We’re open to looking into WebEx alternatives. - Webmaster (John Jones) :
Question on links: Many competitors in the real estate industry by far out
rank some of my clients because they’ve been around for years and have hundreds
or thousands of agent to agent links. Any chance of flushing Google’s aged
in bound links? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Even giant
sites can be suppassed by creative webmasters! - Webmaster (jordans) :
Are there any detriments to ‘hot-linking’ videos on youtube? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : No, that’s
fine. - Webmaster (Nelu Lazar) :
If I provide good keyworks within Title and Description tags, will I need
additional Keywords tag in meta information? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa): : First and
foremost you should make sure that the relevant words are included in your
site’s content. Title and meta tags can supplement that, but they’re not a
replacement for highly relevant content. - Webmaster (webado) :
The page uses at /hopme/ “noindex,follow” whereas the regular homepage
has no block - Google Expert (John Mueller): : That’s a
great way to control the indexing of it. - Webmaster (Gary Campbell) :
My suggestion to Google is to detail issues in webmaster tools, especially
if there’s a site problem, or penalty. we have to guess. You could save millions
of hours of effort. - Google Expert (John Mueller): : We are considering
& working on that, thanks! - Webmaster (Richard Hearne) :
@Susan – I cant see you in the participants list? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa): : I’m in the
‘Panelists’ section Ha, I can’t type 🙂 - Webmaster (Ian M) :
What meta data so we use for geolocation, and what tags do you not use? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : We don’t
use meta tags for geolocation — you can use the Webmaster Tools settings
though. - Webmaster (Mark) :
Our products can be accessed by different url’s (e.g. ex.com/catalog.asp?P=1234
or ex.com/catalog/keyword.asp). Is that considered duplicate content? - Google Expert (Evan) : : Hi Mark,
as far as SERPs go, Google will show the most appropriate URL of the two to
the user if they’re they same. - Webmaster (Alan Rothstein) :
If we have two websites one .ca and one .com, how would Google.com or Google.ca
handle these? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Google can
use that information to determine which one would be most relevant to the
users (especially those in Canada who use “sites in this country”
as a search setting). - Webmaster (gaurav doshi) :
now u can see the vide? - Google Expert (Evan) : : We have turned
off the cam chat. The audio is still on though. - Webmaster (Amy Balliett) :
What is your take on image replacement? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : It’s great!
But you need to make sure that it’s a correct replacement (do not replace
lots of keywords with a simple image). Also, those images are usually not
indexed with image search. - Webmaster (Alan Rothstein) :
how does Google deal with syndicated articles or duplicated content. How do
the original content providers get the original value? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If content
is syndicated, you might want to make sure that you have a link back to your
site (if your site is the original). - Webmaster (Swaroop) :
How about getting us first into the next round of really secret beta invites
list ? - Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : How did you
find out about the “really secret beta invites list? [:) - Webmaster (Mark) :
Thanks Evan. So it’s ok to have two url’s to the same page? - Google Expert (Evan) : :As long as
they follow Google Webmaster Guidelines, everything is up to you 🙂 - Webmaster (Charlie) :
There are many high-quality sites that use image replacement techniques (such
as Fahrner image replacement) to provide a better user experience. If you’re
using this technique in a legitimate way to benefit your users, you shouldn’t
have problems. - Google Expert (John Mueller): : That’s correct.
- Webmaster (Doug) :
Susan how long does it usually take to get a post to show in the webmaster
google group - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : It should
show up almost immediately, but sometimes Google Groups has problems that
delay posts. Check their “alerts and updates” section here to see
if they’re having problems: http://www.google.com/support/groups/ - Webmaster (David Gomel) :
Are we safe with 302ing paid links? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : if you have
paid links, you need to make sure that they do not pass pagerank. If you can
redirect them, make sure that the redirecting URL cannot be indexed (blocked
with a robots.txt). - Webmaster (ParksC) :
Just wanted to point out while I laugh that I am a HE and not a she, ha ha. - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Hi!
- Webmaster (ali merchant) :
Matt, if a site is hosted internationally, its preferred to use a top level
domain extension such as .co.uk, however wont that affect traffic within the
US though. - Google Expert (MattD) : : ali, Ah,
I see. If you have a country-specific TLD, you are inherently already targeting
a region. If you have a generic TLD, you can use the geolocation feature in
Webmaster Tools to specify either a subdomain or subdirectory as targeted
to a country. - Webmaster (Amit Agarwal) :
I have seen aggregators like megite.com, social sites like Digg and even splogs
rank above in Google than the actual webpage. Can we prevent this ? - Google Expert (Reid) : : Hi Amit –
if you see a splog rank above the actual webpage that owns the original content,
feel free to file a spam report to let Google know: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html - Webmaster (Alan Rothstein) :
how often do take action on paid text link (or spam reports) reports in google
webmaster tools - Google Expert (Mariya) : : Alan, be
assured that all spam reports which are submitted are reviewed. - Webmaster (Bob Shirilla) :
Please provide opinion on Hackersafe and Authorize.net, Should a retail store
use these services? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : if those
services provide value to your visitors without breaking any of our webmaster
guidelines, then that can be a good thing for your site. - Webmaster (ali merchant) :
any pros cons around using h1 tags. I like to add them from a usability perspective
(for instance on a product detail page) - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you can
provide context to your content by using headers, by all means use them. - Webmaster (Gary Carpenter) :
where do I access webmaster help groups - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help/topics?start=
- Webmaster (ParksC) :
My site dropped out of the rankings for any term with a date in it (2009 widgets)
but didn’t lose any ground for main non-dated keywords. A lot of our title
tags have dates in them, could this be an over-optimization penalty? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : There are
many factors involved in ranking — for details, you may want to ask the experts
in the Webmaster Help groups. - Webmaster (Dictina) :
I want to make some case conversion of my URLs in order to have all them in
minor case and avoid duplicates, , but I am afraid of overloading the server
with 301 redirection. Any idea to make efficient redirects? - Google Expert (John Mueller): : In general
even a large number of 301 redirects will not be a problem in the long run.
One way you can help that is by using a Sitemap file. - Webmaster (webado – Christina) :
I think it does. All it is js on, you get splash and redirect to /hom/; js
off you stay on root but see what would have been at /home/ - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you have
cleaned up the links to your site as much as possible, make sure that you
detail what you did and file a reconsideration request. However, make sure
that all of your site complies with all of the guidelines beforehand. - Webmaster (Doug) :
What would be the process if you feel google thinks you have paid links but
you do not - Google Expert (Wysz) : : If you feel
that your site may have been detected as being in violation of the Webmaster
Guidelines and it is not (or is no longer), then submitting a reconsideration
request in Webmaster Tools is the way to go. - Webmaster (ParksC) :
again with asking for inclusion, would you need to wait until Google has recrawled
any/all sites you have had paid links changed on before asking? And how long
would you expect to wait to see results from asking for inclusion? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you have
cleaned up the links to your site as much as possible, make sure that you
detail what you did and file a reconsideration request. However, make sure
that all of your site complies with all of the guidelines beforehand. - Webmaster (Amy Balliett) :
I have reported a competitor for spam multiple times (they use CSS to push
about 50 repeated keywords off the screen on load). I’ve seen nothing happen
as a result of my spam report, is there a better way to report this? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : The spam
report is the best way to do this. FYI we do take all spam reports into account,
but we don’t take immediate manual action on all of them (we use many of them
to improve our algorithms in the long term), so you may not see immediate
changes. - Webmaster (Gabe) :
It sounds like you are big on blogs. How would you rank the blog software
out there (wordpress, blogge, etc.) in terms of which has the most SEO friendly
coding so that we can best succeed in search results? - Google Expert (MattD) : : Hey Gabe,
covering this over voice right now. - Webmaster (Jacque) :
Could you go into more detailed of the links? what does “float”
PR mean? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : I’m not aware
of “float” PR. - Webmaster (webado – Christina) :
I guess the usual “an image is with 1000 words” doesn’t quite apply
😉 - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Only if you
do not use keyword stuffing in your alt tags. - Webmaster (Eric) :
can you explain rel=nofollow tags on links? When and where should we use these
tags? - Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : If you want
to link to a site that you either don’t trust or can’t vouch for use rel nofollow.
For user generated content like the comments section of a blog, user added
URLs can be auto nofollowed if you don’t have time to monitor these Links - Webmaster (David Gomel) :
So in certain cases, 302s could be passing PR? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : You should
make sure that the redirecting URLs cannot be crawled, then you should be
ok. - Webmaster (Phil Peterman) :
Thank you Jonathan, I ask because we are doing a redseign now and are using
it in our navs rather heavily - Google Expert (JonathanSimon) : : sure np
- Webmaster (Manish) :
Are .com domains better placed in SERPs than say .in domains ? - Google Expert (Mariya) : : Manish, the
.com domain is a generic top-level domain, while .in is a country-specific
domain. While they could appear mixed in the serps, the .in domains would
be naturally better targeted for India-specific local queries - Webmaster (Manish) :
Does the country where your .in domain is hosted makes any difference in SERPs - Google Expert (Evan) : : Hi Manish,
this may affect different geographical google domains, such as google.co.uk
or google.com. I would suggest using WM Tools to set geolocation preferences. - Webmaster (Doug) :
Spam reports are good but i think that some type of reputation should be given
to them based on how man someone does maybe - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If you file
spam reports, make sure that you do that from within your webmaster Tools
account. Those reports are treated with higher priority. - Webmaster (Jaan Kanellis) :
Can you say that PR Sculpting is important for most all websites to use? - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : Personally
I think that the majority of sites would benefit more from spending their
time and energy on other things (making sure the site’s content is accessible,
unique and compelling, promoting their site, building community, etc.). - Webmaster (webado – Christina) :
Evan, the geolocation preference only works for generic tld’s, isn’t that
true? If your tld is already a country tld then that’s the geolocaiton already - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa) : : True.
- Webmaster (Doug) :
What if a link is not paid but google thinks its paid and treats it like one. - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : We take a
look at the bigger picture. - Webmaster (Mark) :
We recently added a favicon to our site. When I view source it appears above
the <title> tag. Will that affect our rankings since the title and meta
description are further from the <head> tag? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : No
- Webmaster (Mark Kaufman) :
Thanks. It was strange that after years of pagerank of 7 or so, to have it
drop off to 0, but since traffic was unaffected we didn’t completely freak
out. 😉 - Google Expert (Evan) : : Awesome,
its always best not to freak out. We have a great blog post about housekeeping
items at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/03/good-housekeeping.html - Webmaster (John Jones) :
Is it better to clean up / remove / update in bound links even if those links
probably don’t pass ANY value? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : If those
links cannot pass any value then you should be fine. However, you should also
make sure that there are not other items which are problematic with your linking. - Webmaster (Manish) :
How can I know which page on my site is leaking PR. Some of my blogs are penalized
for paid links. I have nofollowed or roboted out whatever I could find. I have
requested reconsideration requests too. but still no PR. - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : There’s generally
no need to worry about “leaking PR”. - Webmaster (Ian M) :
Seeing as you’re going to look through this Q&A – can you please go over
(ina post) about which meta language data you will look at, specifically which
out of these: html lang=, meta name=language, meta http-equiv=content-language - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : We do not
look at the language meta tags — we’ve discovered that they are often incorrect
and that it is better to recognize the language through the content. - Webmaster (Rob) :
Is subdomain considered a “separate” domain that will come up in
search results as “competing” with the main domain? - Google Expert (Evan) : : Hi Rob, there
is usually some level of connection among subdomains and root domains. - Webmaster (John Jones) :
@ John Mueller: biggest indicator that a link isn’t passing value would be
what in your opinion? If Webmaster Tools knows of the link wouldn’t that go
to say that it is passing something? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : To prevent
passing of pagerank from a link you can apply a rel=nofollow or make sure
that they redirect through URLs which cannot be crawled. - Webmaster (webado) :
so ya mean I’ve been wasting my time setting the language properly? lol - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : No, it shows
that you take your content seriously, which is probably reflected in the rest
of your content! - Webmaster (John Jones) :
@ John Mueller: biggest indicator that a link isn’t passing value would be
what in your opinion? If Webmaster Tools knows of the link wouldn’t that go
to say that it is passing something? - Google Expert (John Mueller): : To prevent
passing of pagerank from a link you can apply a rel=nofollow or make sure
that they redirect through URLs which cannot be crawled. - Webmaster (webado):
so ya mean I’ve been wasting my time setting the language properly? lol - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : No, it shows
that you take your content seriously, which is probably reflected in the rest
of your content! a - Webmaster (Doug) :
Is it better to have a site with a different tld for different languages or
to point someone to a language based on their IP a - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : both can
work, or you can use a geeric tld and use webmaster tools to assign geotargeting. - Google Expert (Susan Moskwa): Again: I’d
recommend always allowing the user to make a choice about what language to
see; some people may prefer a different language than you would automatically
assign to them based on their IP. - Webmaster (dockarl) :
You said that words in the url are good for users Adam, but what about for
search engines? - Google Expert (MattD) : : dockarl,
I’ll try to cover this while Adam talks. 🙂 If you think about this in the
same way as images, a descriptive file name can be more helpful than a non-descriptive
filename for users and search engines. - Webmaster (John Jones) :
would including the img url in the site map help? - Google Expert (John Mueller) : : Yes, but
it will not pass as much context for image search as an image that is embedded
in a HTML page. - Webmaster (Dictina) :
Tags vs categories navigation or pagination: which is best? which should <I
nofollow? - Google Expert (Evan) : : It is up
to you how you want to have users navigate your pages, both can work well.
I would suggest using nofollow on links that you do not want to pass PageRank
(links that are unrelated to your website, etc) - Webmaster:
How would you rate the importance of <title> tags? - Google Expert: : Title tags
are important for users to understand what to expect on your website. Google
will serve your title tag in the results page, and you want your users to
have a clear understanding of where they are going. - Webmaster:
Wanting to serve mobile content at mobile.example.com using the same db and
some of the same content on the main site. How do I get ranked on mobile devices
and still avoid duplicate content filters on the mobile content? - Google Expert: : That should
be fine — don’t forget mobile sitemapsDocument Prepared by Search Engine
Genie Team
References: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/03/join-us-for-online-live-chat-this.html
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