Google has just released a update on Webmaster Tools called Summer Shine. I was going through it. There are some tweaks in user visibility & navigation, but more importantly two new useful features for you.
Thought, you have got sitelinks of your site in Google. You may want to remove a particular one like email contact page link to avoid more spam. Now you can do that. There is a option to block non-homepage sitelinks. The situation may arise quite seldom. But its better to have some option in hand.
Next one is good for collaborative sites. If another webmaster has submitted a URL removal request of your site, you can view them. And if it was a mistake, you can undo it.
Google engineer Matt Cutts is doing a series of video interviews lately especially on Google SEO. Have you wondered where to go to ask him a question for the interview? Here is the link! Go there & post your question for July 2009. Just not only SEO, you can ask him anything on Google products too. Questions should be generic i.e. not a site-specific. Moreover you can vote for other questions whether you like it or dislike. And help them to be popular enough to be chosen for the video.
Google Webmaster Tools has launched a new tool called Change of address with its brand new look. If you are moving your site from old domain to a new one, it can be of much help. Using this service you can reflect the change in Google index faster & make the transition smoother for your users. You can find the tool under Site Configuration option of the respective site. You have to have both old & new domain verified to use this service. So there is no problem of unauthorized access.
There is step by step instruction of how Google recommend you to move your site to a new domain. It can remove any complication on your part. So if you are planning to migrate, don’t forget to check it to notify Google about your new url & retain your position on their search engine.
Today when I entered Google Webmaster Tools, I saw a message like “We’re changing! Check out our new look!“ And there was a link to activate the new interface. Wow! when I checked it, it looked simpler & easier to navigate. Here is the new dashboard screenshot:
Features are now grouped together into three main categories:
Site configuration – You provide your site information to Google here
Your site on the web -You can find Google data about your site
Diagnostics -You can find any reports about crawling your site
Look at the below screenshot to get a clear idea what options are grouped under those categories:
This interface has really impressed me. By the way if you have any problem finding a feature in the new design, Google support has created a page to help you out. Every feature has its new navigation path listed. It will be quite easy for you.
So what are you waiting for? Click here to go the new interface directly.
Google has just released Google Services for Websites – an all in one webmaster service package that can easily be implemented by the hosting providers in their own service. It is an enhanced version of the Google Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program that was released last year.
If you own a hosting company or web publishing service then you can sign up for it. It will enable your customers to access Google webmaster services from your control panel directly. It now includes:
Google Webmaster tools to drive traffic
Custom Search or Google Site Search to enhance search capabilities for the sites
Adsense to monetize sites
There is some incentive for you. You can earn referral fees when a customer creates an Adsense account that generates revenue or upgrades to Google Site Search.
There has been a talk on the increasing importance of branded search results in Google. I have found this useful video about Matt Cutts talking on this new discussion. Listen to this & you will have a clear idea about Google’s point of view on branding search results.
It’s pretty assuring to know that Google doesn’t rely on branding that much. Everyone of us cannot have brand. But what we can have is high quality content
Google Webmaster Central Team have introduced a new YouTube channel that will host webmaster related videos. The first video is already up & they are planning to release more videos soon.
Google Japan’s PR has come down to 5 from usual 9. But Why? Google has penalized Google Japan for running pay-per-post campaigns to promote their product. Google Japan is fighting hard to dislodge Yahoo as the no.1 search engine in Japan. Japan’s blogosphere was filled with reports that Google hired Cyberbuzz, a Tokyo-based internet marketing company to promote their Hot Keywords Widget as per per post basis. You can read TechCrunch & Asiajin’s follow ups on this.
Google Japan is running several promotional activities to let people know more about our products.
It turns out that using blogs on the part of the promotional activities violates Google’s search guidelines, so we have ended the promotion. We would like to apologize to the people concerned and to our users, and are making an effort to make our communications more transparent in order to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.
And now its PageRank is down to 5. Here is what Matt Cutts said about the penalty in Twitter:
Google.co.jp PageRank is now ~5 instead of ~9. I expect that to remain for a while.
So Google penalized itself for paying for blogger reviews. That’s bizarre.
Google has released Google News based element for webmasters & developers. If you are a blogger or a webmaster, you can easily add Google news box in you site.
You can choose related categories under your niche or even mention some specific keywords to get news from. You can easily embed the news box by implementing few lines of code from wizard page or can use the API option.
If you are a niche blogger or a product review blogger or blog about local issues & political issues, this can be quite good. It will add some fresh relevant content to your site. But I would like to see an option to open news link in a new window so that readers don’t have to leave a site.
Google is offering some of AdWords advertisers a new beta interface to test. Look at the new interface:
As you can see, it shares fair bit of similarity with the charting system of Google Analytics (somewhat similar to Yahoo Sponsored Search interface too).
There are two things that I would like to let you know.
It won’t effect the way your ads run.
You can always switch back & forth between the new beta & the current interface.
