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1. Ask in public.
   If you post your question in our forum, the whole world gets to see the answer. Then when Betty has the same question a week later, she benefits because she can find the answer instantly in our forum, and I benefit because it saves me from having to answer the same question twice (or ten times, or fifty times, or...). We have a very strong preference for answering questions publicly (in a forum, on a blog, at a conference, in a video...) so that many people can benefit from the answer.
2. Do your homework.
   We put a lot of effort into writing articles, blog posts and FAQs to help people learn about search and site-building, and we strongly encourage you to search our Help Center, blog and/or forum for answers before asking a question. You may find an answer on the spot. If you don’t, when you post your question be sure to indicate what resources you’ve already read and why they didn’t meet your needs: for example, “I read the Help Center article on affiliate websites but I’m still not sure whether this particular affiliate page on my site has enough added value; can I get some feedback?” This shows that you’ve taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves everyone from reiterating the obvious solutions if you’ve already ruled those out, and it will help get you a more specific and relevant answer. It can also help us improve our documentation if something’s missing.
3. Be specific.
   If you ask a vague question, you’re likely to get a vague answer. The more details and context you can give, the more able someone will be to give you a relevant, personalized answer. For example, “Why was my URL removal request denied?” is likely to get you a link to this article, as removals can be denied for a variety of reasons. However, if you say what type of removal you requested, what denial reason you got, and/or the URL in question, you’re more likely to get personalized advice on what went wrong in your case and what you can do differently.
4. Make it relevant to others.
   As I said earlier, we like to help as many people at a time as we can. If you make it clear how your question is relevant to more people than just you, we’ll have more incentive to look into it. For example: “How can site owners get their videos into Google Video search? In particular, I’m asking about the videos on www.example.com.”
5. Let us know if you’ve found a bug.
   As above, the more specific you can be, the better. What happened? What page or URL were you on? If it’s in Webmaster Tools, what site were you managing? Do you have a screenshot? All of these things help us track down the issue sooner. We appreciate your feedback, but if it’s too vague we won’t understand what you’re trying to tell us!
6. Stay on-topic.
   Have a question about Google Analytics? iGoogle? Google Apps? That’s great; go ask it in the Analytics / iGoogle / Apps forum. Not every Googler is familiar with every product Google offers, so you probably won’t get an answer if you’re asking a Webmaster Central team member about something other than Web Search or Webmaster Tools.
7. Stay calm.
   Trust me, we’ve heard it all. Making threats, being aggressive or accusatory, YELLING IN ALL CAPS, asking for “heeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp!!!!!1!!,” or claiming Google is involved in a mass conspiracy against you & your associates because your sites aren’t ranked on page one... Rather than making others want to help you, these things are likely to turn people off. The best way to get someone to help is by calmly explaining the situation, giving details, and being clear about what you’re asking for.
8. Listen, even when it’s not what you wanted to hear.
   The answer to your question may not always be the one you wanted; but that doesn’t mean that answer isn’t correct. There are many areas of SEO and website design that are as much an art as a science, so a conclusive answer isn’t always possible. When in doubt, feel free to ask people to cite their sources, or to explain how/where they learned something. But keep an open mind and remember that most people are just trying to help, even if they don’t agree with you or tell you what you wanted to hear.

• Is the URL that's appearing in search results the exact same URL that you submitted for removal? It's fairly common for the same, or similar, content to appear on multiple URLs on a site. You may have successfully removed one URL, but still see others containing that same content.
     Solution: Request removal of the other URL(s) in question. See this article for help.


• Keep in mind that URLs are case sensitive, so requesting removal of http://www.example.com/embarrassingstuff.html is not the same as requesting removal of http://www.example.com/EmbarrassingStuff.html
     Solution: Request removal of the exact URL(s) that appear in search results, including the same capitalization. See this article for help.


• When a request is marked "Removed," that can mean different things depending on what type of request you submitted. If you requested removal of an entire URL, then "Removed" should mean that that entire URL no longer appears in our search results. If you requested removal of the cached copy of a URL, "Removed" means that the cached copy has been removed and will no longer appear in search results; but the URL itself may still appear.
     Solution: Double-check what type of removal you requested by looking at the "Removal Type" column. If you requested a cache removal but you want the entire URL gone, make sure the URL meets the requirements for complete removal and then file a new request for complete removal of the URL.

• To clean up cruft, like old pages that 404.
  The tool is intended for URLs that urgently need to be removed, such as confidential data that was accidentally exposed. If you recently made changes to your site and just have some outdated URLs in the index, Google's crawlers will see this as we recrawl your URLs, and those pages will naturally drop out of our search results over time. There's no need to request an urgent removal through this tool.


• To remove crawl errors from your Webmaster Tools account.
  The removal tool removes URLs from Google's search results, not from your Webmaster Tools account. There's currently no way for you to manually remove URLs from this report; they will drop out naturally over time as we stop crawling URLs that repeatedly 404.


• To "start from scratch" with your site.
  If you're worried that your site may have a penalty, or you want to "start from scratch" after purchasing a domain from someone else, we don't recommend trying to use the URL removal tool to remove your entire site and then "start over." Search engines gather a lot of information from other sites (such as who links to you, or what words they use to describe your site) and use this to help understand your site. Even if we could remove everything we currently know about your site, a lot of it would come back exactly the same once we'd recrawled all the other sites that help us understand your site and put it in context. If you're worried that your domain has some bad history, we recommend filing a reconsideration request letting us know what you're worried about and what has changed (such as that you've acquired the domain from someone else, or that you've changed certain aspects of your site).


• To take your site "offline" after hacking.
  If your site was hacked and you want to get rid of bad URLs that got indexed, you can use the URL removal tool to remove any new URLs that the hacker created, e.g., http://www.example.com/buy-cheap-cialis-skq3w598.html. But we don't recommend removing your entire site, or removing URLs that you'll eventually want indexed; instead, simply clean up the hacking and let us recrawl your site so that we can reindex the new, cleaned-up content as soon as possible. This article contains more details on how to deal with hacking.


• To get the right "version" of your site indexed.
  When a request to remove https://www.example.com/tattoo.html is accepted, http://www.example.com/tattoo.html is also removed. The same is true of the www and non-www versions of your URL or site. This is because the same content is often available at each of these URLs and we realize that most webmasters and searchers don't want these duplicates appearing in search results. In short, the URL removal tool should not be used as a canonicalization tool. It won't keep your favorite version, it'll remove all versions (http/https and www/non-www) of a URL.

• block the page from crawling via a robots.txt file
• block the page from indexing via a noindex meta tag
• indicate that the page no longer exists by returning a 404 or 410 status code

• robots.txt: You can check whether the URL is correctly disallowed using either the Fetch as Googlebot or Test robots.txt features in Webmaster Tools.
• noindex meta tag: You can use Fetch as Googlebot to make sure the meta tag appears somewhere between the <head> and </head> tags. If you want to check a page you can't verify in Webmaster Tools, you can open the URL in a browser, go to View > Page source, and make sure you see the meta tag between the <head> and </head> tags.
• 404 / 410 status code: You can use Fetch as Googlebot, or tools like Live HTTP Headers or web-sniffer.net to verify whether the URL is actually returning the correct code. Sometimes "deleted" pages may say "404" or "Not found" on the page, but actually return a 200 status code in the page header; so it's good to use a proper header-checking tool to double-check.

• Remove user-specific details from URLs.
  URL parameters that don't change the content of the page—like session IDs or sort order—can be removed from the URL and put into a cookie. By putting this information in a cookie and 301 redirecting to a "clean" URL, you retain the information and reduce the number of URLs pointing to that same content.
• Rein in infinite spaces.
  Do you have a calendar that links to an infinite number of past or future dates (each with their own unique URL)? Do you have paginated data that returns a status code of 200 when you add &page=3563 to the URL, even if there aren't that many pages of data? If so, you have an infinite crawl space on your website, and crawlers could be wasting their (and your!) bandwidth trying to crawl it all. Consider these tips for reining in infinite spaces.
• Disallow actions Googlebot can't perform.
  Using your robots.txt file, you can disallow crawling of login pages, contact forms, shopping carts, and other pages whose sole functionality is something that a crawler can't perform. (Crawlers are notoriously cheap and shy, so they don't usually "Add to cart" or "Contact us.") This lets crawlers spend more of their time crawling content that they can actually do something with.
• One man, one vote. One URL, one set of content.
  In an ideal world, there's a one-to-one pairing between URL and content: each URL leads to a unique piece of content, and each piece of content can only be accessed via one URL. The closer you can get to this ideal, the more streamlined your site will be for crawling and indexing. If your CMS or current site setup makes this difficult, you can use the rel=canonical element to indicate the preferred URL for a particular piece of content.

Today, however, I'm thrilled to announce that our English and Polish Help Groups are getting a makeover. And the changes are more than just skin-deep. Our new Help Forums should make it easier for you to find answers, share resources with others, and have your participation acknowledged.

You can read more about the changes on the Official Google Blog, and then check it out for yourself: English, Polish.

Q: What will happen to the old English and Polish Help Groups?
A: While our old groups are now closed to new posts, they will still be available in read-only mode in case you want to reference any of your favorite posts from the good old days. Many of the most frequently-asked questions (and answers!) have already been transferred to our new Help Forums.

Q: If I was a member of the old group, will I automatically be a member of the new forum?
A: We won't be "transferring" membership from the old groups to the new, so even if you were a member of our Google Groups forum, you'll still need to join the new forum in order to participate. Nicknames and user profiles are also managed separately, so you're welcome to recreate your Google Groups profile in our new forum, or reinvent yourself.

Q: What about the Webmaster Help Groups in other languages?
A: They'll be moving to the new Help Forum format in 2009. Specific dates will be announced in each of the groups as they get closer to their moving date.

Feel free to post any other questions about the new Help Forums in the comments below.

...Okay, not exactly. But we will be looking into what a "website" means in the context of Webmaster Tools, what kind of sites you can add to your Webmaster Tools account, and what data you can get from different types of sites.

Why should you care? Well, the following are all questions that we've gotten from webmasters recently:

• "I know my site has lots of incoming links; why don't I see any in my Webmaster Tools account?"
• "I see sitelinks for my site in Google's search results, but when I look in Webmaster Tools it says 'No sitelinks have been generated for your site.'"
• "Why does my Top search queries report still say 'Data is not available at this time'? My site has been verified for months."

In each of these cases, the answer was the same: the data was there, but the webmaster was looking at the wrong "version" of their domain in Webmaster Tools.

A little background

The majority of tools and settings in Webmaster Tools operate on a per-site basis. This means that when you're looking at, say, the Top search queries report, you're only seeing the top search queries for a particular site. Looking at the top queries for www.example.com will show you different data than looking at the top queries for www.example.org. Makes sense, right?

Not all websites have URLs in the form www.example.com, though. Your root URL may not include the www subdomain (example.com); it may include a custom subdomain (rollergirl.example.com); or your site may live in a subfolder, for example if it's hosted on a free hosting site (www.example.com/rollergirl/). Since we want webmasters to be able to access our tools regardless of how their site is hosted, you can add any combination of domain, subdomain(s), and/or subfolder(s) as a "site" on your Webmaster Tools dashboard. Once you've verified your ownership of that site, we'll show you the information we have for that particular piece of the web, however big or small it may be. If you've verified your domain at the root level, we'll show you data for that whole domain; if you've only verified a particular subfolder or subdomain, we'll only show you data for that subfolder or subdomain. Take Blogger as an example—someone who blogs with Blogger should only be able to have access to the data for their own subdomain (googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com), not the entire blogspot.com domain.

What some people overlook is the fact that www is actually a subdomain. It's a very, very common subdomain, and many sites serve the same content whether you access them with or without the www; but the fact remains that example.com and www.example.com are two different URLs and have the potential to serve different content. For this reason, they're considered different sites in Webmaster Tools. Since they're different sites—just like www.example.com and www.example.org—they can have different data. When you're looking at the data for www.example.com (with the www subdomain) you're not seeing the data for example.com (without the subdomain), and vice versa.

What can I do to make sure I'm seeing all my data?

• If you feel like you're missing some data, add both the www and the non-www version of your domain to your Webmaster Tools account. Take a look at the data for both sites.
• Do a site: search for your domain without the www (e.g. [site:example.com]). This should return pages from your domain and any of your indexed subdomains (www.example.com, rollergirl.example.com, etc.). You should be able to tell from the results whether your site is mainly indexed with or without the www subdomain. The version that's indexed is likely to be the version that shows the most data in your Webmaster Tools account.
• Tell us whether you prefer for your site to be indexed with or without the www by setting your preferred domain.
• Let everyone else know which version you prefer by doing a site-wide 301 redirect.

Even though example.com and www.example.com may look like identical twins, any twins will be quick to tell you that they're not actually the same person. :-) Now that you know, we urge you to give both your www and non-www sites some love in Webmaster Tools, and—as usual—to post any follow-up questions in our Webmaster Help Group.

Posted by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst

Let's put this to bed once and for all, folks: There's no such thing as a "duplicate content penalty." At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that.

There are some penalties that are related to the idea of having the same content as another site—for example, if you're scraping content from other sites and republishing it, or if you republish content without adding any additional value. These tactics are clearly outlined (and discouraged) in our Webmaster Guidelines:

• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Avoid... "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.

(Note that while scraping content from others is discouraged, having others scrape you is a different story; check out this post if you're worried about being scraped.)

But most site owners whom I hear worrying about duplicate content aren't talking about scraping or domain farms; they're talking about things like having multiple URLs on the same domain that point to the same content. Like www.example.com/skates.asp?color=black&brand=riedell and www.example.com/skates.asp?brand=riedell&color=black. Having this type of duplicate content on your site can potentially affect your site's performance, but it doesn't cause penalties. From our article on duplicate content:

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don't follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.

This type of non-malicious duplication is fairly common, especially since many CMSs don't handle this well by default. So when people say that having this type of duplicate content can affect your site, it's not because you're likely to be penalized; it's simply due to the way that web sites and search engines work.

Most search engines strive for a certain level of variety; they want to show you ten different results on a search results page, not ten different URLs that all have the same content. To this end, Google tries to filter out duplicate documents so that users experience less redundancy. You can find details in this blog post, which states:

1. When we detect duplicate content, such as through variations caused by URL parameters, we group the duplicate URLs into one cluster.
2. We select what we think is the "best" URL to represent the cluster in search results.
3. We then consolidate properties of the URLs in the cluster, such as link popularity, to the representative URL.

Here's how this could affect you as a webmaster:

• In step 2, Google's idea of what the "best" URL is might not be the same as your idea. If you want to have control over whether www.example.com/skates.asp?color=black&brand=riedell or www.example.com/skates.asp?brand=riedell&color=black gets shown in our search results, you may want to take action to mitigate your duplication. One way of letting us know which URL you prefer is by including the preferred URL in your Sitemap.
• In step 3, if we aren't able to detect all the duplicates of a particular page, we won't be able to consolidate all of their properties. This may dilute the strength of that content's ranking signals by splitting them across multiple URLs.

In most cases Google does a good job of handling this type of duplication. However, you may also want to consider content that's being duplicated across domains. In particular, deciding to build a site whose purpose inherently involves content duplication is something you should think twice about if your business model is going to rely on search traffic, unless you can add a lot of additional value for users. For example, we sometimes hear from Amazon.com affiliates who are having a hard time ranking for content that originates solely from Amazon. Is this because Google wants to stop them from trying to sell Everyone Poops? No; it's because how the heck are they going to outrank Amazon if they're providing the exact same listing? Amazon has a lot of online business authority (most likely more than a typical Amazon affiliate site does), and the average Google search user probably wants the original information on Amazon, unless the affiliate site has added a significant amount of additional value.

Lastly, consider the effect that duplication can have on your site's bandwidth. Duplicated content can lead to inefficient crawling: when Googlebot discovers ten URLs on your site, it has to crawl each of those URLs before it knows whether they contain the same content (and thus before we can group them as described above). The more time and resources that Googlebot spends crawling duplicate content across multiple URLs, the less time it has to get to the rest of your content.

In summary: Having duplicate content can affect your site in a variety of ways; but unless you've been duplicating deliberately, it's unlikely that one of those ways will be a penalty. This means that:

• You typically don't need to submit a reconsideration request when you're cleaning up innocently duplicated content.
• If you're a webmaster of beginner-to-intermediate savviness, you probably don't need to put too much energy into worrying about duplicate content, since most search engines have ways of handling it.
• You can help your fellow webmasters by not perpetuating the myth of duplicate content penalties! The remedies for duplicate content are entirely within your control. Here are some good places to start.

Posted by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst

You may have noticed that we recently rewrote our article on What is an SEO? Does Google recommend them? Previously, the article had focused on warning people about common SEO scams to look out for, but didn't mention many of the valuable services that a helpful SEO can provide.

The article now notes some of the benefits of search engine optimization, and provides some guidance to site owners who are considering hiring an SEO. We'd also like to get your perspective: how would you define SEO? What questions would you ask a prospective SEO? What advice would you give to an inexperienced webmaster who's considering whether to contract an SEO? We'd like to hear your thoughts and incorporate your feedback if there's important advice that we should add.

1. Local search: Help nearby searchers find your business.
   Of the various search verticals, local search was the one we heard the most questions about. Here are a few tips to help business owners get the most out of local search:
• Add your business to our Local Business Center
• Make sure your business is listed under the appropriate categories
• Make sure your business name, address and phone number appear on your website, and that they're accessible to search engines
• Add your business hours, images, coupons, or additional information to help searchers determine whether your business meets their needs
2. Video search: Enhance your video results.
   Several site owners asked whether they could specify a preferred thumbnail image for videos when they appear in search results. Good news: our Video Sitemaps protocol lets you suggest a thumbnail for each video.
   
3. Personalized search basics
   A few observations from Googler Phil McDonnell:
• Personalization of search results is usually accomplished through subtle ranking changes, rather than a drastic rearrangement of results. You shouldn't worry about personalization radically altering your site's ranking for a particular query.
  
• Targeting a niche, or filling a very specific need, may be a good way to stand out in personalized results. For example, rather than creating a site about "music," you could create a site about the musical history of Haiti. Or about musicians who recorded with Elton John between 1969-1979.
• Some personalization is based on the geographic location of the searcher; for example, a user searching for [needle] in Seattle is more likely to get search results about the Space Needle than, say, a searcher in Florida. Take advantage of features like Local Business Center and geographic targeting to let us know whether your website is especially relevant to searchers in a particular location.
  
• As always, create interesting, unique and compelling content or tools.
4. Image search: Increase your visibility.
   One panelist presented a case study in which a client's images were being filtered out of search results by SafeSearch because they had been classified as explicit. If you find yourself in this situation and believe your site should not be filtered by SafeSearch, use this contact form to let us know. Select the Report a problem > Inappropriate or irrelevant search results option and describe your situation.
   

Our search quality and Webmaster Central teams love helping webmasters solve problems. But since we can't be in all places at all times answering all questions, we also try hard to show you how to help yourself. We put a lot of work into providing documentation and blog posts to answer your questions and guide you through the data and tools we provide, and we're constantly looking for ways to improve the visibility of that information.

While I always encourage people to search our Help Center and blog for answers, there are a few articles in particular to which I'm constantly referring people. Some are recent and some are buried in years' worth of archives, but each is worth a read:

1. Googlebot can't access my website
   Web hosters seem to be getting more aggressive about blocking spam bots and aggressive crawlers from their servers, which is generally a good thing; however, sometimes they also block Googlebot without knowing it. If you or your hoster are "allowing" Googlebot through by whitelisting Googlebot IP addresses, you may still be blocking some of our IPs without knowing it (since our full IP list isn't public, for reasons explained in the post). In order to be sure you're allowing Googlebot access to your site, use the method in this blog post to verify whether a crawler is Googlebot.
2. URL blocked by robots.txt
   Sometimes the web crawl section of Webmaster Tools reports a URL as "blocked by robots.txt", but your robots.txt file doesn't seem to block crawling of that URL. Check out this list of troubleshooting tips, especially the part about redirects. This thread from our Help Group also explains why you may see discrepancies between our web crawl error reports and our robots.txt analysis tool.
3. Why was my URL removal request denied?
   (Okay, I'm cheating a little: this one is a Help Center article and not a blog post.) In order to remove a URL from Google search results you need to first put something in place that will prevent Googlebot from simply picking that URL up again the next time it crawls your site. This may be a 404 (or 410) status code, a noindex meta tag, or a robots.txt file, depending on what type of removal request you're submitting. Follow the directions in this article and you should be good to go.
4. Flash best practices
   Flash continues to be a hot topic for webmasters interested in making visually complex content accessible to search engines. In this post Bergy, our resident Flash expert, outlines best practices for working with Flash.
5. The supplemental index
   The "supplemental index" was a big topic of conversation in 2007, and it seems some webmasters are still worried about it. Instead of worrying, point your browser to this post on how we now search our entire index for every query.
6. Duplicate content
   Duplicate content—another perennial concern of webmasters. This post talks in detail about duplicate content caused by URL parameters, and also references Adam's previous post on deftly dealing with duplicate content, which gives lots of good suggestions on how to avoid or mitigate problems caused by duplicate content.
7. Sitemaps FAQs
   This post answers the most frequent questions we get about Sitemaps. And I'm not just saying it's great because I posted it. :-)

Sometimes, knowing how to find existing information is the biggest barrier to getting a question answered. So try searching our blog, Help Center and Help Group next time you have a question, and please let us know if you can't find a piece of information that you think should be there!

• the site on which the Sitemap is located
• the site(s) whose URLs are referenced in the Sitemap
  

• John Müller covers SMX Stockholm
• I recap the AMA's Search Engine Marketing conference

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 a webpage with a lot of links about a specific topic. The startpages are hosted on a startpage domain and each separate startpage is maintained by an individual webmaster. The links on startpages are usually ordered by categories related to the topic of the page. Besides hyperlinks, startpages often contain text, animations and pictures. Startpages are quite unique to the Dutch market, and offer a simple interface for novice users to create their own web portals, with a unique approach to user-generated content.

The whole startpage concept began in September 1998 with the launch of Startpagina.nl, which was set up to be an online linkbook for the inexperienced Internet user. Since then, Startpagina.nl has become a huge success, mainly because an enormous number of volunteers created and maintained the different startpages covering lots of interesting and diverse topics. Since Startpagina.nl emerged, lots of other startpage domains have been created, and are still being created today. The fact that there are still new startpage domains appearing and that the number of individual startpages on these domains is still increasing shows the continued popularity of startpages in the Dutch market.

Creating useful startpages

As a search engine, we love to have useful and diverse pages showing up in the search results we present to our users. We thought it would be a good idea to highlight some of the best practices we've seen in creating value-added startpages.

1. Create your startpage for users, and not for search engines. This involves making sure that all your text on the page is visible to users, and writing full sentences as descriptions instead of just keywords.
2. Try to deliver unique, informative and on-topic content. The structure of startpages is pretty straightforward and does not leave much room for variation. However, you can make a difference. Try to find a topic you know a lot about that has not been fully covered yet. Create good categories that are related to your topic and give a relevant title to every category. Then, find links that are related to the categories on your page and label every link with an anchor text that is relevant. For example, instead of naming your links 'link1', 'link2' et cetera, you can choose names that make clear where the link is pointing to. And you can write a short description for every category.
3. Don't create startpages out of commercial intent or for the sole purpose of exchanging links. Of course there is nothing wrong with trying to monetize your startpage, but a page with only banners and affiliate links is not the best user experience and therefore not recommended. The same goes for startpages that are created as part of a link network. For example, pages that have all links pointing to a particular website and to other startpages that are also pointing to that same website. These kind of link schemes have no added value for the user and go against the Google webmaster guidelines.

With this post, we hope to have provided potential startpage webmasters with some helpful guidelines that will help to create the type of startpages the Dutch speaking people love!

On a final note, we would like to encourage you to fill in a paid links form if you come across a startpage that is involved in buying and selling links for the purpose of search engine manipulation. To report other forms of bad behavior, you can send a spam report. We'll review each report we get and use this feedback to enhance our algorithms and improve our search results. As always, we really appreciate your feedback and your help to provide the best search experience.

Startpagina's

Op de Nederlandstalige markt zijn de zogenaamde startpagina's bijzonder populair. In dit artikel willen we, naast het geven van wat achtergrondinformatie over startpagina's, toekomstige startpaginabeheerders een aantal tips geven voor het creëren van unieke en informatieve startpagina's.

Wat is een startpagina?

Een startpagina is een webpagina met een verzameling links gerelateerd aan een specifiek onderwerp. De startpagina's worden gehost op een startpagina domein en elke individuele startpagina wordt beheerd door een webmaster. De links op een startpagina zijn meestal opgedeeld in verschillende categorieën die relevant zijn voor het specifieke onderwerp van de startpagina. Naast een indeling in hyperlinks vind je op een startpagina vaak tekst, animaties en plaatjes. Het concept van startpagina's is redelijk specifiek voor de Nederlandstalige markt en komt nauwelijks voor in andere markten. Startpagina's hebben een simpele interface die het, ook voor de onervaren internetgebruikers, eenvoudig maakt om een eigen webpagina te creëren.

Het startpagina concept kwam tot stand in september 1998 met de lancering van Startpagina.nl, dat werd opgezet als een soort van linkboek voor de onervaren internet gebruiker. Startpagina.nl bleek al gauw een enorm succes. Dit succes was vooral te danken aan het enorme aantal vrijwilligers dat meehielp om startpagina's te creëren en beheren. Dat er nu, bijna negen jaar later, nog steeds nieuwe startpagina domeinen verschijnen en dat het aantal individuele startpagina's op deze domeinen nog steeds groeit toont aan dat de startpagina's onverminderd populair zijn.

Een waardevolle startpagina creëren

Als zoekmachine vinden we het fantastisch om waardevolle pagina's met unieke content en diversiteit in onze zoekresultaten te hebben. Het leek ons daarom een goed idee om een aantal tips te geven die kunnen helpen bij het creëren van startpagina's met toegevoegde waarde.

1. Maak een startpagina voor internetgebruikers en niet voor zoekmachines. Zorg dat alle tekst zichtbaar is en gebruik volledige zinnen in plaats van enkel een aantal keywords.
2. Probeer unieke, informatieve en aan je onderwerp gerelateerde inhoud aan je bezoekers te presenteren. Hoewel de opzet van een standaard startpagina niet heel veel ruimte biedt voor variatie, kun jij als beheerder het verschil maken! Begin met het zoeken naar een onderwerp waar je veel over weet en waar naar jouw idee nog niet genoeg informatie over te vinden is. Maak vervolgens relevante categorieën aan die gerelateerd zijn aan het onderwerp en geef elke categorie een relevante naam. Zoek vervolgens de links die je op je startpagina wil plaatsen en geef elke link een anchor tekst die omschrijft waar de link je bezoeker naar toe stuurt. Noem je links niet link1, link2, en link3, maar geef ze een naam die relevant is voor de inhoud van de pagina waar de link naar verwijst. Als extra aanvulling kan voor iedere categorie een korte beschrijving worden toegevoegd.
3. Maak geen startpagina's vanuit een puur commercieel oogpunt. Er is niets mis met te proberen om wat te verdienen met je startpagina, maar vergeet niet dat je bezoekers niet zitten te wachten op een pagina met alleen reclamebanners en affiliate links. Hetzelfde geldt voor startpagina's die enkel worden aangemaakt als onderdeel van een linknetwerk. Een voorbeeld hiervan zijn startpagina's waarbij alle links verwijzen naar eenzelfde website en naar andere startpagina's die ook allemaal naar dezelfde website verwijzen. Dit soort startpagina's hebben geen enkele waarde voor je bezoekers en gaan bovendien in tegen de Google Richtlijnen voor Webmasters.

We hopen dat we met deze eerste Nederlandstalige post potentiële startpaginabeheerders hebben kunnen voorzien van een aantal nuttige tips die er voor zorgen dat zij het soort startpagina's kunnen gaan creëren waar onze Nederlandstalige gebruikers van houden!

Tot slot willen we iedereen aanmoedigen om een paid link formulier in te vullen, wanneer je een startpagina tegenkomt die links koopt en verkoopt om daarmee zoekmachines te manipuleren. Andere zaken die ingaan tegen de Google Richtlijnen voor Webmasters kun je melden door een spamrapport in te sturen. Wij bekijken elk rapport dat wordt ingestuurd en deze informatie wordt gebruikt om onze algoritmes en zoekresultaten verder te verbeteren. Zoals altijd wordt jullie feedback en hulp om onze gebruikers te voorzien van de meest relevante zoekresultaten enorm gewaardeerd!

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 ha fatto molto piacere esserci e vorrei ringraziare tutti quelli che si sono fermati semplicemente a salutare o a discutere di strategie dei motori di ricerca. Abbiamo avuto la possibilità di parlare con diversi dei partecipanti e con alcuni dei più importanti attori del mondo SEO e Web Search Marketing in Italia. Discussioni utili e fruttuose per molti aspetti. Si e' parlato di come il mercato Web si stia sviluppando in Italia, di strategie SEO e di evangelizzazione (la traduzione italiana suona veramente forte).

Un buon numero di voi è saltato fuori con domande interessanti, e mi piacerebbe ora esporre un caso per poi fornire un paio di chiarificamenti che siano chiari e concisi.

Allora partiamo. Questa è la situazione in cui un webmaster potrebbe ritrovarsi: ho ottimizzato questo sito utilizzando tecniche non in accordo con le linee guida di Google. Ce la siamo cavata per un po', e questo ci ha aiutato a raggiungere la seconda posizione nei risultati di ricerca per alcune parole chiave. Ad un certo punto però, abbiamo ricevuto una email dal team della qualità della ricerca di Google che diceva che il nostro sito non sarebbe stato momentaneamente più presente nell'indice (nelle email c'è sempre almeno un esempio delle tecniche utilizzate). Abbiamo allora sistemato il sito togliendo tutto ciò che non era conforme alle linee guida e dopo alcuni giorni il nostro sito era di nuovo presente nell'indice. Come è possibile che non è più posizionato in seconda posizione nonostante il fatto che abbiamo rimosso tutto ciò che non era conforme alle linee guida?!

Va bene, lasciatemi fare un paio di domande prima di rispondere.

• Non avete ottimizzato il sito utilizzando quelle tecniche al fine di posizionarlo il meglio possibile artificialmente?
• Non pensavate che quelle tecniche avrebbero funzionato, almeno in una prospettiva di breve periodo?

Quindi se c'è stato un utilizzo di tecniche spam, incoraggiamo il sito che ha ricevuto la notifica da Google a prendere la cosa seriamente. Molti ripuliscono il proprio sito dalle tecniche scorrette di ottimizzazione dopo aver ricevuto una nostra notifica, ma noi dobbiamo anche tenere in considerazione che oltre a quelle presenti sul sito (per esempio testo nascosto, redirecting doorway page, etc) spesso ci sono anche tecniche utilizzate al di fuori del sito stesso come link popularity artificiali per guadagnarsi un’ottima posizione nelle pagine dei risultati di ricerca di Google.

Quindi, per rendere la questione più chiara possibile, una volta che ognuna delle manipolazioni sopra citate, inserite ai fini del posizionamento, e’ stata rimossa, il sito torna ad occupare la posizione che merita sulla base dei suoi contenuti e della sua link popularity naturale. C'è in oltre da evidenziare che il posizionamento del vostro sito dipende anche dagli altri siti relazionati al vostro per argomento trattato e tali siti nel frattempo potrebbero essere stati ottimizzati correttamente, va da sé che questo avrebbe un impatto anche sulla vostra posizione.

Notate che non c’è alcun tipo di penalizzazione preventiva applicata a quei siti che, ora puliti, hanno però visto in precedenza un utilizzo di tecniche non consentite. E questo è un punto a cui teniamo particolarmente: non rimangono né malus né macchie nella storia di un sito.

E' per questo motivo che insistiamo fermamente nel consigliare di lavorare sodo sui propri contenuti in modo che siano una risorsa che abbia valore per gli utenti, essendo proprio il buon contenuto una delle risorse più importanti che alimentano una link populary naturale e tutti dovremmo ormai sapere quanto una tale popolarità possa essere solida.

Qualità della ricerca, qualità dei contenuti e l'esperienza dei tuoi lettori.

Tra le varie conversazioni sulla qualità della ricerca, una su tutte ricorreva più spesso. Mi riferisco alle landing page e come scrivere per i motori di ricerca, due temi che spesso viaggiano in coppia quando si parla di risultati organici di ricerca.

Pensiamo allora al tuo visitatore che ha cercato qualcosa con Google e ha trovato la tua pagina. Ora, che tipo di accoglienza gli stai riservando? Una buona esperienza di ricerca consiste nel trovare una pagina che contiene l'informazione necessaria per rispondere alla domanda posta all'inizio.

Tuttavia un errore frequente nello scrivere per motori di ricerca é dimenticare proprio il visitatore e focalizzare l'attenzione solo sulla sua domanda. In effetti potremmo sostenere, "é con quella chiave di ricerca che hanno trovato la mia pagina!"

Alla fine dei conti, esasperare un comportamento del genere potrebbe portare a creare pagine fatta "su misura" per rispondere a quella ricerca ma con ben poco contenuto. Pagine del genere spesso utilizzano tecniche quali, tra l'altro, pure ripetizioni di parole, contenuti duplicati e in generale minimo contenuto. Ricapitolando, possono anche essere a tema con la domanda posta - ma per il tuo visitatore, sono inutili. In altri termini, hai finito per creare una pagina scritta solo per i motori di ricerca e ti sei dimenticato del visitatore. Il risultato é che l'utente trova pagine all'apparenza a tema ma in realtà completamente insignificanti.

Queste pagine "insignificanti", fatte artificialmente per generare traffico dai motori, non rappresentano una buona esperienza di ricerca. Anche se non adottano tecniche scorrette, quali ad esempio testo o links nascosti, sono fatte solo ed esclusivamente per posizionarsi per specifiche parole chiave, o combinazioni di parole, ma in realtà non offrono autonomamente alcun valore come risultato di una ricerca.

Un primo approccio per capire se stai causando una cattiva esperienza di ricerca ai tuoi utenti é controllare che le pagine trovate siano davvero utili. Queste pagine avranno contenuto a tema, che risponde alla domanda originalmente posta dall'utente ed in generale sono significative e rilevanti. Potresti cominciare con il controllo delle pagine che ricevono più visite e passare poi a rivedere tutto il sito. E per concludere, un consiglio: in generale, anche quando si vuole ottimizzare la pagina affinché il motore la trovi facilmente, bisogna ricordarsi che i visitatori sono il tuo pubblico e che una pagina scritta per i motori di ricerca non soddisfa necessariamente le aspettative del visitatore in termini di qualità e contenuti. Allora se stai pensando a come scrivere per il motore di ricerca, pensa invece ai tuoi utenti e a qual é il valore che stai offrendo loro!

We're back from SES Milan!

...with a couple of clarifications

Ciao everybody! We just got back from Italy—great weather there, I must say! We attended SES in Milan on the 29th and 30th of May. The conference was a great opportunity to talk to many of you. We really had a good time and want to thank all the people who stopped by to simply say "hi" or to talk to us in more detail about search engine strategies. This gave us a chance to talk to many participants and many of the big Italian actresses and actors in the SEO and web marketing worlds. We discussed recent developments in the Italian internet market, SEO strategies and evangelizing.

A number of you have raised interesting questions, and we'd like to go through two of these in more detail.

This is a situation a webmaster might find himself/herself in: I optimized this site using some sneaky techniques that are not in accordance with Google´s Webmaster Guidelines. I got away with it for a while and it helped me to rank in second position for certain keywords. Then, suddenly, I got an email from Google saying my site has been banned from the index because of those techniques (in these emails there is always an example of one of the infractions found). I now have cleaned up the site and after some days the site was back in the index.
Why on earth doesn't my site rank in the second position anymore, even though I've already paid for the sneaky techniques we used?

OK, before answering let me ask you a couple of questions:

• Didn't you optimize your site with those techniques in order to artificially boost the ranking?
• Didn't you think those techniques had worked out (in a short term perspective at least)?

So, if there has been spamming going on, we encourage a site that has gotten an email from Google to take this notification seriously. Many people clean up their sites after receiving a notification from us. But we must also take into account that besides the shady SEO techniques used on a particular site (for instance hidden text, redirecting doorway pages, etc) there are often off-site SEO techniques used such as creating artificial link popularity in order to gain a high position in Google's SERPs.

So, to make it straightforward, once those manipulations to make a site rank unnaturally high are removed, the site gains the position it merits based on its content and its natural link popularity. Note that of course the ranking of your site also depends on other sites related to the same topic and these sites might have been optimized in accordance to our guidelines, which might affect the ranking of your site.

Note that a site does not keep a stain or any residual negative effect from a prior breach of our webmaster guidelines, after it has been cleaned up.

That is why we first and foremost recommend to work hard on the content made for the audience of your site, as the content is a decisive factor for building natural link popularity. We all know how powerful a strong natural link popularity can be.

Search quality, content quality and your visitor's experience.

During our conversations about search-related issues, another topic that came up frequently was landing pages and writing for search engines, which are often related when we consider organic search results.

So, think of your visitors who have searched for something with Google and have found your page. Now, what kind of welcome are you offering? A good search experience consists of finding a page that contains enough information to satisfy your original query.

A common mistake in writing optimized content for search engines is to forget about the user and focus only on that particular query. One might say, that's how the user landed on my page!

At the end of that day, exaggerating this attitude might lead to create pages only made to satisfy that query but with no actual content on them. Such pages often adopt techniques such as, among others, mere repetition of keywords, duplicate content and overall very little value. In general, they might be in line with the keywords of the query – but for your visitor, they’re useless. In other words, you have written pages solely for the search engine and you forgot about the user. As a result, your visitor will find a page apparently on topic but totally meaningless.

These “meaningless” pages, artificially made to generate search engine traffic, do not represent a good search experience. Even though they do not employ other not recommendable techniques, such as for examples hidden text and links, they are very much made solely for the purpose of ranking for particular keywords, or a set of keywords, but actually are not offering a satisfying search result in itself.

A first step to identify if you are causing a bad search experience for your visitor consists of checking that the pages that he or she finds are actually useful. They will have topical content, that satisfies the query for which your visitor has found it and are overall meaningful and relevant. You might want to start with the pages that are most frequently found and extend your check up to your entire site. To sum up, as general advice, even if you want to make a page that is easily found via search engines, remember that the users are your audience, and that a page optimized for the search engine does not necessarily meet the user's expectations in terms of quality and content. So if you find yourself writing content for a search engine, you should ask yourself what the value is for the user!