Written by Maile OhyeToday we’re launching our Message Center, a new way for webmasters to receive personalized information from Google in our webmaster console. Should we need to contact you, you’ll see a notification in your Webmaster Tools dashboard.
Initially the messages will refer to search quality issues, but over time we’ll use the Message Center [...]

Given helpful suggestions from our discussion group, we’ve improved feedback for sitemaps in Webmaster Tools. Now, minor problems in a sitemap will be reported as “warnings,” and will appear instead of, or in addition to, more serious “errors.” (Previously all problems were listed as errors.) Warnings allow us to provide feedback on [...]

Posted by Selina & Jos, Search Quality Team, Dublin
In the Dutch market, the concept of so-called ’startpages’ is hugely popular. In this article we will give some background information on them, and give those of you who may be startpage webmasters a few tips on how to create unique and informative startpages.
What’s a startpage?
Basically, it’s [...]

Written by Mark Berghausen, Search Quality Team
We occasionally get questions on the Webmaster Help Group about how webmasters should work with Adobe Flash. I thought it would be worthwhile to write a few words about the search considerations designers should think about when building a Flash-heavy site.
As many of you already know, Flash is inherently [...]

Posted by Luisella & Stefano, Search Quality Team, Dublin
Un paio di chiarimenti…
Ciao! Siamo appena rientrati da un breve soggiorno in Italia. Tempo fantastico! Abbiamo partecipato come spettatori al Search Engine Strategies conference a Milano nei giorni 29 e 30 maggio. La conferenza è stato davvero una fantastica opportunità per parlare con molti di voi! Ci [...]

Posted by Ríona MacNamara, Webmaster Tools Team
In den letzten Tagen gab es nochmals Versuche, deutsche Webmaster durch falsche E-Mails von Google zu verunsichern. Diese E-Mails stammen nicht von Google. Seit einigen Wochen hat Google die Benachrichtigung von Webmastern durch E-Mails eingestellt. Google arbeitet derzeit an einem zuverlässigeren Webmaster-Kommunikationsprozess.
We’ve noticed that someone is again trying to [...]

Posted by Ríona MacNamara, Webmaster Tools Team
A while ago, I posted in the Webmaster user group, looking for feedback on our Help Center and how we can improve the assistance we provide to our webmasters. And wow, did we get a a lot of feedback - both in the group and in the blogosphere. I’m [...]

Posted by Vanessa Fox
You’ve probably already figured this out if you use webmaster tools, the webmaster help center, or our webmaster discussion forum, but the webmaster central team is a fantastic group of people. You have seen some of them helping out in the discussion forums, and you may have met a few more at [...]

Posted by Vanessa Fox
Last week, I participated in the duplicate content summit at SMX Advanced. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to show how Buffy is applicable to the everday Search marketing world, but mostly I was there to get input from you on the duplicate content issues you face and to brainstorm how search [...]

At Google, we are always working hard to provide searchers with the best possible results. We’ve found that our spam reporting form is a great way to get your input as we continue to improve our results. Some of you have asked for a way to report paid links as well.
Links are an important signal [...]