Posted by Vanessa Fox

At SMX Advanced on Monday, Matt Cutts talked about our webmaster guidelines. Later, during Q&A, someone asked about adding more detail to the guidelines: more explanation about violations and more actionable help on how to improve sites. You ask — we deliver! On Tuesday, Matt told the SMX crowd that we’d updated the guidelines overnight to include exactly those things! We work fast around here. (OK, maybe we had been working on some of it already.)

So, what’s new? Well, the guidelines themselves haven’t changed. But the specific quality guidelines now link to expanded information to help you better understand how to spot and fix any issues. That section is below so you can click through to explore these new details.

Quality guidelines – specific guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t send automated queries to Google.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

As Riona MacNarmara recently posted in our discussion forum, we are working to expand our webmaster help content even further and want your input. If you have suggestions, please post them in either the thread or as a comment to this post. We would love to hear from you!