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!
quarta-feira, 1 de maio de 2013
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:
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.
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:
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.
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
<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.
quinta-feira, 28 de março de 2013
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.
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.
segunda-feira, 25 de março de 2013
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, Hotels, and Google+ Local search.
Webmasters can now choose this option through our Webmaster Tools, and crawled content currently being displayed on Shopping, Advisor, Flights, Hotels, or Google+ Local search pages will be removed within 30 days.
terça-feira, 12 de março de 2013
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:
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
segunda-feira, 16 de abril de 2012
Updates to rich snippets
Webmaster level: All
Today we’re announcing two updates to rich snippets.
First, we’re happy to announce that product rich snippets, which previously were only available in a limited set of locales, are supported globally. Users viewing your site’s results in Google search can now preview information about products available on your website, regardless of where they’re searching from. Here’s an example of a product rich snippet:
Second, we’ve updated the rich snippets testing tool to support HTML input. We heard from many users that they wanted to be able to test their HTML source without having to publish it to a web page. This is now supported by the tool, as shown below.
If you have any questions or feedback about these changes, please let us know in our Help Forum. You can find more information about rich snippets in our Help Center and Webmaster Education site.
Today we’re announcing two updates to rich snippets.
First, we’re happy to announce that product rich snippets, which previously were only available in a limited set of locales, are supported globally. Users viewing your site’s results in Google search can now preview information about products available on your website, regardless of where they’re searching from. Here’s an example of a product rich snippet:
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| A product rich snippet from www.google.fr |
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| Preview rich snippets from HTML source |
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