The second Google webmaster live chat event was held in
June 2008. I love these things and I wanted to make sure that
you all can listen to what took place, just in case you missed
it.
The agenda went as follows:
* INTRO: A quick hello from some of your favorite Help Group
Guides
* John Mueller talked about personalized search.
* Maile Ohye talked about case sensitivity
* Jonathan Simon talked about getting your content out of
Google (not in)
* A ton of Q&A time.
Q&A Session for Webmaster Help Group Chat - JuneTune
- Session number: 577992285
- Date: June 19, 2008
- Starting time: 04:58 pm
_________________________________________________________________
Moh Design - 5:38 pm
Q: hello
Susan Moskwa - 4:39 pm
A: Hi folks! FYI we won't be answering questions until the
chat officially starts (after 2:00 PDT).
_________________________________________________________________
Moh Design - 5:41 pm
Q: what's the time now at your location ?
Matt Cutts - 5:01 pm
A: I have 2:01 p.m. Pacific time, Moh Design
Matt Cutts - 6:29 pm
A: This was fun. Thanks everyone!
_________________________________________________________________
Stephen Noton - 5:02 pm
Q: Hi Matt, Stephen from Adverted, I;m headed back into China
to manage Alibaba, hoping that we can get you and Jainfai
over for SMX this next year :)
Matt Cutts - 5:04 pm
A: Stephen, my wife is pretty harsh on me traveling these
days, but I'd like to get someone from Google out there to
present/speak.
_________________________________________________________________
Quentin Muhlert - 5:02 pm
Q: Can we start putting our questions up?
John Mueller - 5:04 pm
A: Sure!
_________________________________________________________________
Kien Lai - 5:03 pm
Q: Q: can google crawl flash sites/
John Mueller - 5:05 pm
A: Somewhat -- we can extract some information from the flash
files, but it's generally not the same as with HTML sites/pages.
_________________________________________________________________
LeRoy Lee - 5:04 pm
Q: Is this event going to be available in other formats later
to watch?
Susan Moskwa - 5:05 pm
A: Yes, we hope to post the audio and transcripts of the
chat/Q&A.
_________________________________________________________________
brian vastola - 4:59 pm
Q: Does Google look negativly on all caps? <--i can spell
i swear
John Mueller - 5:05 pm
A: nope, we take the letters as they come :)
_________________________________________________________________
Quentin Muhlert - 4:37 pm
Q: I've got a question about internationalization: I have
a multinational site with country-coded subdirectories and
I've registered these as such in Webmasters' tools, will this
be exempt from duplicate content rules for a site spanning
uk/us/aus ?
John Mueller - 5:07 pm
A: That's generally ok. I would still make sure that the
pages are obviously well-targeted for those audiences. It
wouldn't make sense to send users from specific areas to one
general page. In that case, I would use a single page without
geotargeting.
_________________________________________________________________
Alan Rothstein - 5:05 pm
Q: The question everyone wants to ask. What is more detail
about the Google and Yahoo paid partnership, and what do we
need to know?
Susan Moskwa - 5:08 pm
A: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/our-agreement-to-provide-ad-technology.html
_________________________________________________________________
brian vastola - 5:08 pm
Q: whats matts cats name?
Matt Cutts - 5:10 pm
A: I have two cats. One is Emmy (she's a scaredy cat) and
the other one is Ozzie. He's a handful.
_________________________________________________________________
Quentin Muhlert - 5:07 pm
Q: Is there a comprehensive list of the tags that GoogleBot
can read somewhere?
Matt Dougherty - 5:11 pm
A: Hi Quentin, try this HelpCenter doc - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812
_________________________________________________________________
Gregory Wilker - 5:10 pm
Q: will this conference begin soon?
John Mueller - 5:11 pm
A: yes!
_________________________________________________________________
Peter Faber - 5:15 pm
Q: I've got 3 cats,.. cindy, caty and penelopy..
John Mueller - 5:11 pm
A: cute
_________________________________________________________________
Patrick Daly - 5:07 pm
Q: when does the audio start?
Susan Moskwa - 5:11 pm
A: Seems we're having some technical difficulties, we hope
to get the audio working soon...
_________________________________________________________________
Jason Douglas - 5:05 pm
Q: Hi! I'm new to the interactive industry this week. I'm
learning about search marketing, specifically keyword search.
Any advice you have for a newb in the industry?
Susan Moskwa - 5:14 pm
A: I'd recommend getting to know some of the popular blogs
in the industry and follow a couple that you like. There's
a lot of great free information available if you know where
to look!
_________________________________________________________________
Miles Kitchen - 5:06 pm
Q: I'm interested in the huge SERP flux I'm experience for
my main keyword.
Susan Moskwa - 5:15 pm
A: I'd start here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444
_________________________________________________________________
Andrea Moro - 5:08 pm
Q: What about a feedback status on Spam Report? I mean when
I report spam site, I immediately get a message that the suggestion
will be taked on mind, but nobody let us know when, or if
the reported site or submission are right or not.
Matt Cutts - 5:15 pm
A: Andrea, normally we're able to take a look at the reports
pretty quickly. I like the idea of giving a little more feedback
though.
_________________________________________________________________
Morris Rosenthal - 5:10 pm
Q: And a follow-up to anybody, do you count links from papers
indexed by Google Academic, or Google books?
Matt Cutts - 5:16 pm
A: Morris, I don't think that we count publications from
Google Scholar in our backlinks right now unless we already
found the document on the web anyway as if it were a regular
web page.
_________________________________________________________________
seth holladay - 5:14 pm
Q: how do you define and penalize duplicate content? are
syndication deals excluded?
Mariya Moeva - 5:15 pm
A: Hi Seth, we just did a post on duplicate content on the
Google Webmaster Central blog which has a lot of useful information
that may be helpful for you
_________________________________________________________________
Quentin Muhlert - 5:03 pm
Q: I've got a question about internationalization: I have
a multinational site with country-coded subdirectories and
I've registered these as such in Webmasters' tools, will this
be exempt from duplicate content rules for a site spanning
uk/us/aus?
Susan Moskwa - 5:16 pm
A: Geographic targeting doesn't affect the fact that we only
want to show one version of a piece of content in search results;
we will still try to filter out duplicates when we serve search
results.
_________________________________________________________________
Oliver Gonzalez - 5:10 pm
Q: Is there any limit on the number of redirections 301,
a Web site?. In a large site, if you change the URL structure,
is the optimum time to do it with 301? or is best done gradually
Matt Cutts - 5:17 pm
A: There's no per-page limit on the number of 301s you can
do, so you could move 100K pages to 100K new location. However,
if we see a really long chain of redirects, eventually we
will decide to stop following the chain.
_________________________________________________________________
Quentin Muhlert - 5:14 pm
Q: Can you explain the efficacy of the Link: operator in
regard to it's "accuracy" ?
Matt Dougherty - 5:17 pm
A: Hi again Quentin, The link: operator is only intended
to give you a sample of your backlinks. Logging into Webmaster
Tools will give you a more comprehensive list.
_________________________________________________________________
Pete Robertshaw - 5:11 pm
Q: Matt, I was going to ask you about your cat - I've got
two Persians - is that cat grooming tool you posted on your
blog as good as you make out?!
Matt Cutts - 5:17 pm
A: Pete, I wouldn't recommend the tool unless I thought it
was really good. I think it would work well for Persian cats,
esp. because they have very long hair. :)
_________________________________________________________________
jeremy rivera - 5:06 pm
Q: If a website's Robots.txt file is goign to a 404 error
will it be removed from the index? What if it is missing altogether?
Michael Wyszomierski - 5:17 pm
A: If there is no robots.txt file Google will assume that
there are not any crawling restrictions, as long as there
are no other robots directives via meta tags or the x-robots
HTTP header directive.
_________________________________________________________________
David Thurman - 5:17 pm
Q: Will there be a copy of the presentaion after the conference?
Mariya Moeva - 5:17 pm
A: Hi David, yes, a copy of the presentation will be available
_________________________________________________________________
Kien Lai - 5:11 pm
Q: if the site is designed with css, does the crawler throw
out the .css and look only at the HTML?
Matt Cutts - 5:19 pm
A: Typically we wouldn't crawl CSS, Kien, but in a few limited
circumstances we can (e.g. if we're checking for hidden text).
_________________________________________________________________
Jacob Bandes-Storch - 5:07 pm
Q: In regards to the Flash files, I believe it is possible
to create Flash movies with extra accessible content, correct?
evan t - 5:19 pm
A: We encourage building flash sites with html accessibility
for googlebot to crawl. For more information check out our
blog post on flash: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/best-uses-of-flash.html
_________________________________________________________________
Russ Ain - 5:11 pm
Q: Does Analytics incorporate Google Maps/Local traffic within
the organic traffic or does something additional need to be
set up?
Matt Dougherty - 5:19 pm
A: Hi Russ, I'd suggest asking this in the Analytics Help
Group here: http://groups.google.com/group/analytics-help.
There are definitely experts on the topic there.
_________________________________________________________________
ralf bachmann - 5:07 pm
Q: is an empty robots.txt bad?
Reid Yokoyama - 5:19 pm
A: Hi ralf - an empty robots.txt by default will allow all
Internet spiders to crawl through all the pages on your site.
If that is not something you want, then consider modifying
your robots.txt file to set permissions.
_________________________________________________________________
amit agrawal - 5:06 pm
Q: Hi, I am not sure is it good question at this moment,
but am i allowed to crowl google result?
Susan Moskwa - 5:19 pm
A: Making automated queries to our web search results is
against Google's Terms of Service.
_________________________________________________________________
Matthew Diehl - 5:14 pm
Q: I have a competitor who is using cloaking to to cover
up site design and a client linking directory. Is there anything
we can do to inform Google of this?
Mariya Moeva - 5:19 pm
A: Hi Matthew! You can submit a spam report from within your
Webmaster Tools account to report a site which you think displays
spammy behaviors
_________________________________________________________________
brian vastola - 5:13 pm
Q: does google work with any seo companies?
Matt Cutts - 5:20 pm
A: Brian, I don't believe that we recommend any specific
SEO companies. What we typically do instead is try to work
with as many users/webmasters/site owners/SEOs as we can,
e.g. by going to conferences, via chats like this, and on
the webmaster discuss grp.
_________________________________________________________________
Lauren Fortner - 5:07 pm
Q: Our pages are using mod_rewrite to strip ".html"--
Will google think of "process" and "process.html"
as separate pages?
Susan Moskwa - 5:20 pm
A: If both URLs serve content, we will interpret them as
two separate URLs. If the one redirects to the other (e.g.
with a 301 redirect), this will let us know that one is the
preferred/permanent URL.
_________________________________________________________________
Seth Nickerson - 5:19 pm
Q: can you use geotargeting to target a region or a # of
countries?
Pedro Dias - 5:20 pm
A: Hi Seth, geotargeting at the moment is only possible to
target single countries, no regions are supported at the moment.
_________________________________________________________________
shefqet avdullau - 5:16 pm
Q: @Matt Cutts. Is quoting, or "block" quoting
for this matter considered as duplicate content? Does it "hurt"
at all? And to what extend it does if it does indeed.
Matt Cutts - 5:21 pm
A: I would be careful not to "block quote" an entire
article and then not add any of your own info (that's essentially
spam scraping), but just regular quoting would be fair use
and shouldn't cause you any issues.
_________________________________________________________________
Rabin Acharya - 5:17 pm
Q: i am not seeing any slide, but thats fine i guess!
Matt Cutts - 5:21 pm
A: Try clicking the little "return" arrow in the
bottom right.
_________________________________________________________________
Mark Kaufman - 5:05 pm
Q: Is there a limit to the number or % of results from a
single site in the Google News home and category pages? Would
it perhaps be better for a company to have multiple news sites
(different domains) in order to get more links on Google News
pages?
Matt Dougherty - 5:21 pm
A: Hi Mark, I would recommend taking this question to the
Google News Help Group here: http://groups.google.com/group/googlenews-help.
_________________________________________________________________
Abhijeet Mukherjee - 5:18 pm
Q: Whats the average time after which the PR of a site gets
updated?
Matt Cutts - 5:22 pm
A: We typically do pushes to the toolbar every 3-4 months,
so it can take that long between toolbar data pushes.
_________________________________________________________________
Alan Rothstein - 5:18 pm
Q: MSN is thinking of having a generic 404 error page option
with links from the MSN organic results. How will this affect
Google search results?
Matt Cutts - 5:22 pm
A: Alan, I haven't looked into this myself, but my hope is
that MSN would preserve the 404 HTTP status code. Then users
can use the page but search engines will still see that the
page is 404.
_________________________________________________________________
Peter Faber - 5:23 pm
Q: Matt, what is going on regarding site in frame spam? I
mean a kind of directory site with thousands of pages and
sells advertising. But shows the site in a huge iframe.
Mariya Moeva - 5:22 pm
A: Hi Peter, if you have noticed behaviour that you think
might be spammy, please submit a spam report -- Google does
look at all spam reports
_________________________________________________________________
brian vastola - 5:08 pm
Q: beside content, what are the top 3 things to do to your
site to reank high ( short version)
Susan Moskwa - 5:22 pm
A: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349
_________________________________________________________________
paul brewster - 5:09 pm
Q: does google 'value' a website incorporating a relevant
blog and forum
Matt Dougherty - 5:22 pm
A: Hi Paul, I would say that an organic blog or forum definitely
adds value to your website by creating a community effect.
_________________________________________________________________
Brian LaFrance - 5:17 pm
Q: If a site had a noindex meta tag and was removed from
the index, how long before it could come back into the index?
Would that removal carry over to another domain if that site
was 301'd to a new site?
Maile Ohye - 5:23 pm
A: Hi Brian, the site (or just one URL) can return to the
index once it's recrawled with the noindex tag removed. Also,
you can't really noindex a separate domain, even if you 301
(so no mean webmasters can easily exclude your domain from
being indexed).
_________________________________________________________________
Abhijeet Mukherjee - 5:20 pm
Q: Whats the average time after which a site's PR gets updated?
any defined rules for that ?
Reid Yokoyama - 5:23 pm
A: Hi Abhijeet - Google's index is continuously updating
itself so there are no defined timeframes when a site's ranking
will change
_________________________________________________________________
Hiren Pathak - 5:08 pm
Q: I was getting google organic traffic until last week and
all of a sudden it dropped. Now I don't get any traffic from
google organic except just few. my site still getting indexed
Susan Moskwa - 5:23 pm
A: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=8524
_________________________________________________________________
louis lyons - 5:20 pm
Q: Matt, How come you don't enter the Crawling, indexing,
and ranking forums more often?
Matt Cutts - 5:23 pm
A: I feel like there are a bunch of Googlers that do that
really well, but that's fair feedback. I tend to roam all
over the web since I know a bunch of Googlers are already
keeping an eye on that forum.
_________________________________________________________________
Zafar Ahmed - 6:23 pm
Q: Hi Matt! It's me Zafar
Matt Cutts - 5:24 pm
A: Howdy! :)
_________________________________________________________________
Chris Hornak - 5:08 pm
Q: Does google take anything from links taged nofollow, for
example does it read the anchor text and credit that to the
destination?
Susan Moskwa - 5:24 pm
A: No, it basically drops that link from our link graph (it
ignores it).
_________________________________________________________________
Sheila Cole - 5:20 pm
Q: I think my site was hacked through an XSS hole (search
functionality). How can I protect that hole in the future?
Matt Cutts - 5:25 pm
A: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/check-your-search-box-for-xss-exploits/
talked about this a bit and pointed to a good blog posts.
_________________________________________________________________
Peter Faber - 5:28 pm
Q: Great presentation!
John Mueller - 5:25 pm
A: thanks
_________________________________________________________________
brian vastola - 5:10 pm
Q: Where is the best place to see what keywords people are
typing in ?
Susan Moskwa - 5:25 pm
A: This tool gives feedback based on user queries: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
_________________________________________________________________
Angad Singh - 5:18 pm
Q: Will the audio recording, chat and Q&A be available?
Reid Yokoyama - 5:26 pm
A: Hi Angad, we hope to have documentation available
_________________________________________________________________
Tim Dineen - 5:22 pm
Q: What can we do to get the geo-target country correct when
ccTLD isn't available and Webmaster Tools declaration (3-4
months ago) did nothing.
Matt Cutts - 5:26 pm
A: Tim Dineen, I think we offered the feature in the frontend
and then started supported it in the backend a little later,
but I believe that we handle the geotargeting in the webmaster
console pretty quickly these days.
_________________________________________________________________
Briian M - 4:50 pm
Q: Just Curious - Why does a yellow background occasionally
appear in the bottom search box of the SERP?
John Mueller - 5:26 pm
A: This sounds like a plugin in your browser .
_________________________________________________________________
ankit nagarsheth - 5:06 pm
Q: Hi John, I wanted to know more about Google webmaster
tools stats.. How can we automate it? Why are there special
characters like "[" when we download excel file
John Mueller - 5:27 pm
A: Hi Ankit, I have a python script on my site at http://johnmu.com/
that will convert those files into more readable ones.
_________________________________________________________________
Jonathan Faustman - 5:21 pm
Q: Will hiding navigation items with css (that are displayed
on certain pages/directories) have a negative impact when
google indexes the site?
Mariya Moeva - 5:26 pm
A: Hi Jonathan, when building your site and considering hiding
navigation elements, it's best to always think, "is this
good for my users?" and "would i do this if there
were no search engines?
_________________________________________________________________
Andrew Evans - 5:11 pm
Q: Do 301 redirects send PR to its destination? I have several
domains that 301 to 1 domain, and a couple have PR. Will it
now send that PR to the 1 domain now that it is 301 redirected?
Thank you.
Susan Moskwa - 5:27 pm
A: 301 redirects are the best way to let us know that you'd
like a particular URL to get "credit" for factors
from another URL; we'll pass those signals across a 301 redirect
as appropriate.
_________________________________________________________________
Antony Johnson - 5:23 pm
Q: Hi Matt, Are there any guidelines available on keyword
density we have pages that are about 1 single subject and
the keyword density is quite high
Matt Cutts - 5:27 pm
A: Antony, you may not believe this, but we tend not to think
much about KW density here at Google, b/c our algorithms handle
it pretty well. My advice is to pull in an innocent/non-search
friend and have them read the text. If they raise their eyebrow,
...
_________________________________________________________________
fred soriano - 5:24 pm
Q: Just wanted to say hello to everyone ;~)
Pedro Dias - 5:28 pm
A: thanks
_________________________________________________________________
Robert Longfield - 5:11 pm
Q: Does google differentiate between searches in lower case
and searches with proper capitalization?
John Mueller - 5:28 pm
A: We may take this into account if we can recognize that
it is relevant to the query.
_________________________________________________________________
Hiren Pathak - 5:23 pm
Q: I have been trying to figure out why google is showing
different search ranking for my website. I see a spike one
week and i see drastic fall for my google organic traffic
Matt Cutts - 5:29 pm
A: That could be personalized search. It's also the case
that our rankings do change naturally as we crawl different
docs, too.
_________________________________________________________________
Peter Faber - 5:11 pm
Q: Question: Suppose you rank #1 for inanchor: intitle: and
intext: But for just the keyword phrase you¥re on second
page. Any tips on what to do to get up for just the phrase
as well?
Matt Dougherty - 5:29 pm
A: Hi Peter, echoing what John just talked about, I'd say
making sure your content is useful to users is the best approach.
_________________________________________________________________
Carlos Obregon - 5:07 pm
Q: After a reconsideration request, do you typically notify
webmasters that the penalty has been lifted?
John Mueller - 5:29 pm
A: If you recognize that your ranking / indexing has improved,
chances are that it has been accepted. if not, I would recommend
posting in the Webmaster Help Groups.
_________________________________________________________________
Roy Revill - 5:28 pm
Q: is it possible to talk to a tech by phone?
Mariya Moeva - 5:28 pm
A: Hi Roy, if you have a question, it is best to post it
to our Webmaster Help Group
Jessica Wong - 5:31 pm
A: help group can be found here: http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help
_________________________________________________________________
Scott Morrow - 5:23 pm
Q: Matt Cutts, First THANK YOU for all your videos they are
very helpful.
Matt Cutts - 5:29 pm
A: Glad if you like the videos! :)
_________________________________________________________________
jackie nelson - 5:12 pm
Q: What is the explanation for google finding and registering
a site and then having it disappear completely a few days
later? They don't recognize that they registered it at all?
Susan Moskwa - 5:29 pm
A: By "registering" do you mean "indexing"?
Sometimes a site may fall in and out of the index when it's
very new, but this usually stabilizes after awhile. I'd give
it some time.
_________________________________________________________________
Stephen Noton - 5:08 pm
Q: Is there any way to speed up the time between selecting
a country for targeting and it actually beign updated in the
system?
John Mueller - 5:29 pm
A: We're working on improving the webmaster experience with
Webmaster Tools, including speeding up the reaction time for
specific features.
_________________________________________________________________
Saad Kamal - 5:22 pm
Q: Will Google consider giving any incentive to webmasters/users
who helps google to fight spam? Maybe some sort of point based
system would be interesting..This will certainly motivate
all the webmasters to come forward and help google to Keep
Spam out..
Matt Cutts - 5:30 pm
A: Saad, I do like that suggestion a lot. Something for us
to think about.
_________________________________________________________________
Vandy Paseur - 5:23 pm
Q: How long does it take for 301s and 410s to take effect?
Bergy Berghausen - 5:30 pm
A: 301s and 410s can't "take effect" until after
we've had a chance to crawl them--that's the real variable.
After we crawl the URL and get the status code, your removal
/ move should happen within a short period of time, most typically
within a few days.
_________________________________________________________________
Gregory Wilker - 5:14 pm
Q: if there is code commented that contains keyword phrases,
is that seen by google as spamming/spoofing?
Pedro Dias - 5:30 pm
A: Hi Gregory, commented code is ignored by robots, therefore
it will have no influence in anything
_________________________________________________________________
Quentin Muhlert - 5:05 pm
Q: How sensitive is Google Local to differences in addresses?
Will a difference of a space or a dash create confusion in
the matrix?
Matt Dougherty - 5:30 pm
A: Quentin, your question is probably best answered by the
Local experts here: http://local.google.com/support/
_________________________________________________________________
Morris Rosenthal - 5:24 pm
Q: What reasons may cause Google to ignore a small percentage
of pages in a small sitemap (less than 1K pages submitted
by Console).
Matt Cutts - 5:30 pm
A: We do look at the number of links when we decide how much
to crawl, so just submitting a sitemap doesn't guarantee crawling.
_________________________________________________________________
milo 317 - 5:15 pm
Q: I know a blogger spammer that uses my wp themes and turns
them into blogger templates without crediting, I tried to
connect to the spam office, but no luck
Susan Moskwa - 5:31 pm
A: You can submit a spam report to let us know about this:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35265
You could also file a DMCA takedown request if they're stealing
your content.
_________________________________________________________________
Alan Rothstein - 5:24 pm
Q: If a client uses the no cache to stop old pages with different
prices to be shown as a cache result, what are some of the
problems with this?
Matt Cutts - 5:31 pm
A: I wouldn't expect this to be a big problem. Plenty of
sites don't want to show a cached link for various reasons.
_________________________________________________________________
Alan Rothstein - 5:30 pm
Q: What if you use a wild card, still case sensitive?
Bergy Berghausen - 5:31 pm
A: the wildcards aren't case-sensitive (since the're wildcards),
but the other characters are still case-sensitive.
_________________________________________________________________
Hanne Frost - 5:09 pm
Q: How do Google handle microformats? Will I get a better
seo if I use them?
John Mueller - 5:31 pm
A: As far as I know, we mostly use the rel=nofollow microformat.
I don't think that we handle other microformats. We will however
keep track of what's going on to make sure not to miss anything
:)
_________________________________________________________________
Wall-E The Robot - 5:30 pm
Q: I have some Amazon Associates webstores. Obviously they
have the same content that Amazon has. And obviously Google
sees duplicate content and dont indexes a lot of my webpages.
Do you have any suggestions on how to solve this?
Mariya Moeva - 5:31 pm
A: Hi Wall-E, as long as your Amazon Associates store provides
added value to users, there's nothing you should be worried
about
_________________________________________________________________
Hiren Pathak - 5:31 pm
Q: is it true that google first gives free organic traffic
and after a while stops giving free organic traffic and encourages
to use Adwords?
Susan Moskwa - 5:32 pm
A: No; there is no relationship between paid search and organic
search.
_________________________________________________________________
Brian Rutledge - 5:24 pm
Q: Where does Google stand on Sub-domain spam/doorway pages
right now? In some verticals, sub-domain dw pages are more
than 50% top 10 serps.
Reid Yokoyama - 5:32 pm
A: Hi Brian - just caught your question. Google still considers
doorway pages and obviously webspam as violation of our Webmaster
Guidelines.
Reid Yokoyama - 5:32 pm
A: If you see spam in our search results, feel free to submit
a spam report to us at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport
_________________________________________________________________
Mike Lopez - 5:23 pm
Q: What about paid links? Does Google really manage to identify
paid links?
Pedro Dias - 5:32 pm
A: Hi Mike, yes Google does identify paid links.
_________________________________________________________________
Saad Kamal - 5:31 pm
Q: If another website is copying my content, is there any
place where I can report that?
Susan Moskwa - 5:32 pm
A: www.google.com/dmca.html
_________________________________________________________________
brian vastola - 5:24 pm
Q: Stupid Question.. should i submit my site to google monthly/yearly
( told by seo site to do this)?
Matt Cutts - 5:32 pm
A: Brian, I wouldn't bother. You can submit it once at at
google.com/addurl.html
_________________________________________________________________
Nathan Potter - 5:18 pm
Q: Will we ever have control over sitelinks to bring searchers
to the better pages on our site, vs the ones google thinks
are the best pages?
evan t - 5:33 pm
A: Sitelinks are automatically generated by our algorithm
and are meant to help users navigate your site. While you
cannot opt into having sitelinks, you are able to block Sitelinks
using Google Webmaster Tools.
_________________________________________________________________
Carlos Obregon - 5:31 pm
Q: Typically, what % of the websites' pages does Google index
from large sites
Bergy Berghausen - 5:33 pm
A: That depends on the size of the site, its PageRank, and
a bunch of other factors. This is hard to generalize for.
_________________________________________________________________
Ash Buckles - 5:32 pm
Q: Are there any amount of duplicate content pages that are
acceptable? In other words if we have 2 pages serving the
same content is that just as bad as 40 pages serving duplicate
content?
Susan Moskwa - 5:33 pm
A: The real issue with duplicate content is that Google will
try to filter out duplicates when we serve search results.
Generally you don't need to worry about it, but if you want
to have more control over which version we serve, you can
try to mitigate it.
_________________________________________________________________
Rich Graham - 5:20 pm
Q: Matt, AZEA uses hidden text with it's image nav links
(-999ems indent), is that likely to be regarded as suspicious?
evan t - 5:33 pm
A: Hi Rich,
evan t - 5:34 pm
A: We appreciate your assistance in maintaining the quality
of our search results.
evan t - 5:34 pm
A: If you've found a particular site that's spamming our
index, we'd like
to hear about it, and encourage you to submit a Spam Report
at
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport
_________________________________________________________________
Miles Kitchen - 5:10 pm
Q: Is this an unfair "algo". Just to clarify, the
website that were escaping the flux were at #1 and #3, the
#2 spot bouncing like a tennis ball.
John Mueller - 5:34 pm
A: We are constantly working on our algorithms and changes
can and will take place over time.
_________________________________________________________________
Sean Jackson - 5:25 pm
Q: We have noticed that Google indexes/displays our content
within 24 hours and then removes it from the index and then
re-returns it. Is this right?
Matt Cutts - 5:34 pm
A: Sean, that can happen at times. I wouldn't worry about
it.
_________________________________________________________________
Kate Morris - 5:35 pm
Q: Can you submit a DMCA take down request if you don't offically
have a copyright?
Susan Moskwa - 5:34 pm
A: Yes. There's not a guarantee that a specific action will
be taken as a result, but you're welcome to file one and let
the legal folks decide what action to take.
_________________________________________________________________
Angad Singh - 5:23 pm
Q: Would the audio recording be availabe after presentation?
Reid Yokoyama - 5:34 pm
A: Hi Angad, we hope to have audio available, stay tuned!
_________________________________________________________________
Zafar Ahmed - 6:37 pm
Q: I just want to know since I am not breaking any rules
anymore, is there a chance that I can expect a increase in
my PR again? or would Google ignore it in the next update?I
am not really a PR fan, btw.
Matt Cutts - 5:34 pm
A: Zafar, a reconsideration request would be the best place
to do that.
_________________________________________________________________
Roy Revill - 5:30 pm
Q: whats the link to that webmaster help group?
Jessica Wong - 5:34 pm
A: Hi Roy, here is the link to the Official Google Webmaster
Help group http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help
_________________________________________________________________
Brian Ussery - 5:34 pm
Q: Is the mechanism behind Google Site Search that allow
owners to display certain results on top similar to what Google
uses to display certain results (IE Video, Images) on top
in Google Universal?
Matt Cutts - 5:35 pm
A: Brian, I believe that these are different mechanisms.
_________________________________________________________________
Roy Revill - 5:33 pm
Q: why would my pages get http errors?
Susan Moskwa - 5:35 pm
A: You can look in your Webmaster Tools account to see specific
reasons for any HTTP errors. Each error links to a help article
explaining what's going on in more detail.
_________________________________________________________________
Robert Longfield - 5:16 pm
Q: Further on Geotargetting. I run a multinational site with
about 12 different languages being supported. We are implimenting
geotrageting so users are
directed to the appropriate language page for their country.
The concern of some is that Google may penal
John Mueller - 5:35 pm
A: I would recommend not redirecting users based on their
location. This can be a bad user experience. It's better to
allow a user to choose his version based on his searches.
_________________________________________________________________
Siukin Lay - 5:31 pm
Q: I recently got one of my sites de-indexed out of Google,
i believe it was becasue my adsense account got banned for
invalid clicks, is this a valid reason to de-index the site?
and if so, how long does it take to my site back in there?
Mariya Moeva - 5:34 pm
A: Hi Siukin, if your website suddenly disappeared from Google
Search results, and you suspect it might have been due to
a violation of our quality guidelines, it might be a good
idea to submit a request for reconsideration after fixing
the issue
_________________________________________________________________
Jake FIelds - 5:34 pm
Q: i have a client that uses "+" for word connectors
not "-" or _", is that bad? or worth changing
... ie http://pacificbuildinggroup.com/PBG+News.html
Matt Cutts - 5:35 pm
A: Jake, using + as a separator should be fine.
_________________________________________________________________
Alan Rothstein - 5:17 pm
Q: Has Google started crawling video sitemaps faster than
2-3 months as stated in the last session?
John Mueller - 5:36 pm
A: I'm not aware of changes in this regard at the moment.
However, we're always working on improving our processes.
_________________________________________________________________
Quentin Muhlert - 5:29 pm
Q: Does GoogleBot tend to have a preference for long or short
filenames/directory names?
Pedro Dias - 5:36 pm
A: Hi Quentin. No Googlebot doesn't have preference on short
or long filenames/directory names, usualy short names are
preferred by users for usability purposes.
_________________________________________________________________
Michael Nguyen - 5:23 pm
Q: I'm thinking about serving up an optimized version of
my site for accessiblity reasons (no javascript, high contrast
css, reduced usage of forms), would Google be ok if we served
them this version?
Matt Dougherty - 5:36 pm
A: Michael, this sounds reasonable as long as the user doesn'
t get something they didn't intend on. There are plenty of
sites that link off their flashy home page to an HTML version
of their site.
_________________________________________________________________
Juan Camus - 5:25 pm
Q: I've been using google Analytics for a while. Since then,
some customers complains about slow access. Could it be related?
Reid Yokoyama - 5:36 pm
A: Hi Juan - if you're experiencing problems with Google
Analytics, feel free to check out the Analytics Help Center
to troubleshoot: http://www.google.com/analytics/support_overview.html
_________________________________________________________________
Wall-E The Robot - 5:35 pm
Q: Mariya, I'm in Brazil and listening to the conversation
via my cell phone - who's paying for this international call???
Mariya Moeva - 5:35 pm
A: Hi Wall-E, WebEx provides toll-free numbers for most countries.
I hope you dialled the toll-free number and not the regular
number (-:
_________________________________________________________________
Alan Rothstein - 5:31 pm
Q: When you use the robots.txt tool in Webmaster Tools does
it abide by this case sensitive rule?
Maile Ohye - 5:36 pm
A: Hi Alan, yes. The robots.txt analysis tool is case sensitive
in the correct areas. Directives like "disallow"
can be lower or uppercase. Path and directories are correctly
case sensitve.
_________________________________________________________________
Rich Graham - 5:18 pm
Q: To what extent is google developing LSI in it's search
algo?
John Mueller - 5:37 pm
A: As a webmaster, you generally don't need to worry about
details such as that. Writing content for your users is still
better than creating content based on artificial metrics.
_________________________________________________________________
Zafar Ahmed - 6:38 pm
Q: Matt - how can I go about it?
Matt Cutts - 5:37 pm
A: Zafar, http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843
and http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto/
are two places to read.
_________________________________________________________________
Rabin Acharya - 5:35 pm
Q: is fluctuating in ranking also depends on which server
is active or inactive on that certain day?
Susan Moskwa - 5:37 pm
A: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=8524
_________________________________________________________________
brian vastola - 5:36 pm
Q: what does googlebot like?
Mariya Moeva - 5:36 pm
A: milk and cookies!
_________________________________________________________________
Patrick Daly - 5:32 pm
Q: if underscores work, then WHY do hyphens?
Pedro Dias - 5:37 pm
A: Hi Patrick, I guess it's a matter of preference :)
_________________________________________________________________
Adam Hayes - 5:33 pm
Q: After a site that had been hacked to display malicious
code is cleaned up, do we just send a "request reconsideration"
through the webmaster tools?
Matt Cutts - 5:37 pm
A: Adam, that's correct. That's a great way to do it.
_________________________________________________________________
Brian Dhatt - 5:24 pm
Q: Any comments on the seomoz article "why apple isn't
UK enough for google?" Any other tips/tricks about UK
sites which are physically hosted in the USA and not on a
.co.uk?
evan t - 5:37 pm
A: Great question. In Webmaster Tools you can set geotargeting.
For more information please see: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/where-in-world-is-your-site.html
_________________________________________________________________
Hiren Pathak - 5:36 pm
Q: we are not seeing any presentation right now..is there
one?
Susan Moskwa - 5:37 pm
A: No, there aren't any slides for our next few presentations!
_________________________________________________________________
Andrea Moro - 5:18 pm
Q: What about a beter improvement of ~ operator? I mean,
for english thesaurus it's perfect, but ever you tried to
use it in italian? Every suggestion return most of the time
a no-sense result.
John Mueller - 5:37 pm
A: Thanks, I'll pass it on to the appropriate team!
_________________________________________________________________
Casey M - 5:23 pm
Q: What is an acceptable time for a page to load? A what
point does the quality score suffer?
evan t - 5:38 pm
A: Hi Casey, is this an adwords question?
_________________________________________________________________
Art Min - 5:35 pm
Q: presentation isn't showing up
Pedro Dias - 5:38 pm
A: please, use the Q&A just for questions :)
_________________________________________________________________
Miles Kitchen - 5:19 pm
Q: Matt, I'm experiencing a huge flux in SERP's result (especially
for my website). I see positions change soemtime in seconds,
so they are very "liquid". Will this settle down
or is this here for good.
John Mueller - 5:38 pm
A: Thanks!
_________________________________________________________________
Andrea Moro - 5:18 pm
Q: I think that now, with the new G Translate service you
can improve a lot the service
John Mueller - 5:38 pm
A: Thanks!
_________________________________________________________________
Serge Sokolov - 5:33 pm
Q: Is there any chance, that problems in receiving robots.txt
can completely prevent site from indexing?
Mariya Moeva - 5:38 pm
A: Hi Serge, if you suspect that there are issues with the
robots.txt file for your site, a good place to check for more
information is your Webmaster Tools account -- on the Overview
page you will be able to see if there are any robots.txt -related
errors.
_________________________________________________________________
Brian Woodcraft - 5:19 pm
Q: my site disapeared for 7 days and came back today. Should
I be worried that it might be a warning of a problem
John Mueller - 5:38 pm
A: It's always good to be on top of changes.If you can't
recognize anything, I would recommend posting in Webmaster
Help groups.
_________________________________________________________________
Kun Dang - 5:35 pm
Q: I work for a Digital Agency and I was wondering if there
is any way to share Webmaster Tools access? Just like Analytics,
I would like to share the data with colleges and clients.
Matt Cutts - 5:39 pm
A: Kun, multiple people can register in webmaster console,
so that's one way to do it. It's not quite as clean as MCC
or some other things, but it is possible for multiple to access
the data that way.
_________________________________________________________________
Eric Gisler - 5:38 pm
Q: Does a Custom Search Engine use the main Google Index
to perform a search, or is it a separate indexed version of
the site?
Susan Moskwa - 5:39 pm
A: It's a bit of both. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/05/sitemaps-offer-better-coverage-for-your.html
_________________________________________________________________
Serge Sokolov - 5:31 pm
Q: Is there any chance, that problems in receiving robots.txt
can completely prevent site from indexing?
Mariya Moeva - 5:38 pm
A: In addition, you can use the robots.txt analysis tool
in your Webmaster Tools account to analyze your robots.txt
file
_________________________________________________________________
Seth Nickerson - 5:19 pm
Q: what if your URL path is in english and the content of
the site is in Spanish, on a .com.mx domain? would it be better
to use spanish language in the URL paths?
John Mueller - 5:39 pm
A: It's best to keep URLs in a way that users can recognize
what the content is about.
_________________________________________________________________
brian vastola - 5:38 pm
Q: what things would be bad to do for your website? what
not to do (main things)
Susan Moskwa - 5:39 pm
A: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
_________________________________________________________________
Gregory Wilker - 5:20 pm
Q: this is a general question - how is google dealing with
code that is commented out. I am coming across a lot of sites
I deal with were a programer will have commented out code
instead of removing it - I am wondering if this has a potential
adverse effect.
John Mueller - 5:39 pm
A: We ignore it.
_________________________________________________________________
Mike Lopez - 5:37 pm
Q: how long before googlebot revisits a previously timedout
site?
Bergy Berghausen - 5:39 pm
A: That varies quite widely based on the site and the page
on it. Look at your server logs to see how often Googlebot
read the page before. It will probably be around that long.
:-)
_________________________________________________________________
Hugo Salgado - 5:36 pm
Q: I see some 404 errors in my site. How can I see the referer
page? Could it come from external sites?
Pedro Dias - 5:39 pm
A: Hi Hugo, usually that type of data is visible in your
server logs. Don't forget also to do a check for possible
broken internal links :)
_________________________________________________________________
Jonathan Faustman - 5:37 pm
Q: Is there an XML sitemap generator that Google recommends?
Or is it better to create by hand?
Maile Ohye - 5:39 pm
A: Hi Jonathan, we have a python XML Sitemap generator if
you'll familiar with command line execution. Otherwise, we've
listed other options as well: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34654
_________________________________________________________________
Rabin Acharya - 5:30 pm
Q: is 301 redirect considered as SPAM?
Reid Yokoyama - 5:40 pm
A: Hi Rabin - a 301 permanent redirect is not considered
webspam itself, but if you end up on a page that IS webspam,
then that's another problem :)
_________________________________________________________________
Zafar Ahmed - 6:41 pm
Q: Matt - how can I do the reconsideration?
Jessica Wong - 5:40 pm
A: Hi Zafar, Please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reinclusion?hl=en
to learn more and submit your site for reconsideration.
_________________________________________________________________
Rabin Acharya - 5:37 pm
Q: i have noticed multiple times that some of my competitors
have multiple pages listed on certain keyword search. i believe
google is trying to make sure only one page from a site is
going to be listed. am i hearing it wrong?
Matt Cutts - 5:40 pm
A: Rabin, we're typically happy to show up to two pages from
one hostname in our search results. For a navigational search,
it might not be bad to show more results from one domain.
But we like diversity and try to preserve it.
_________________________________________________________________
Alfred Michael - 5:35 pm
Q: My blog moved to a new domain, but I still have both blogs
running with the same content, so that old visitors dont miss
my blog.... Is this treated as duplicate content ?
Mariya Moeva - 5:39 pm
A: Hi Alfred, if you have settled on using the new domain
for your blog, it might be a good idea to consider setting
up a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain
_________________________________________________________________
Zafar Ahmed - 6:30 pm
Q: Is the Q&A session on right now Matt?
evan t - 5:40 pm
A: Hi Zafar, it is with all Googlers.
_________________________________________________________________
Alan Rothstein - 5:38 pm
Q: I have not seen any change when submitting paid text link
and spam reports. What happens with these and if someone is
grossly using paid text links why is nothing happening?
Susan Moskwa - 5:41 pm
A: We usually use them to improve our algorithms, so changes
may be more long-term than immediate. But we definitely take
these reports into consideration. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/impact-of-user-feedback-part-1.html
_________________________________________________________________
Brent Payne - 5:37 pm
Q: thanks we can see it now
Reid Yokoyama - 5:41 pm
A: Great Brent! Hope you're enjoying the chat :)
_________________________________________________________________
David Thurman - 5:39 pm
Q: Does Google favor .html over say .php or do you treat
all URL's the same
Bergy Berghausen - 5:41 pm
A: A URL is a URL. As long as it's serving content we can
read, Googlebot doesn't care what the file extension is.
_________________________________________________________________
John Honeck - 5:43 pm
Q: Is violating the webmaster guidelines and then lying about
it in a reconsideration request have worse reprecutions than
simply violating the guidelines in the first place?
Maile Ohye - 5:41 pm
A: Very funny, John. :)
_________________________________________________________________
Josh Perfetto - 5:36 pm
Q: spam?
Pedro Dias - 5:41 pm
A: no thanks :)
_________________________________________________________________
Miles Kitchen - 5:39 pm
Q: Is informational content better added in a blog or plain
pge (html) format?
Matt Cutts - 5:41 pm
A: Miles, you can do it either way. For Google rankings,
it doesn't make a big difference either way.
_________________________________________________________________
Zafar Ahmed - 6:44 pm
Q: Thanks Jessica
Jessica Wong - 5:41 pm
A: Sure! Thanks for your question :)
_________________________________________________________________
Jake FIelds - 5:39 pm
Q: Is there a review/approval process related to business
reviews in personalized search, i have reviewed local businesses
then did not see those reviews posted
Susan Moskwa - 5:41 pm
A: I'm not sure; this isn't really our team's specialty.
I'd recommend asking in the Google Maps Help Group.
_________________________________________________________________
Alan Rothstein - 5:39 pm
Q: What about LinkExperts, how can they still be using paid
text links and not getting in trouble with Google. Our competitors
are using LinkExperts and getting great rankings in Google
but I don't want to recommend LinkExperts because it is against
guideline
Matt Cutts - 5:42 pm
A: Alan, we're always happy to get suggestions for sites
to look into.
_________________________________________________________________
Alan Rothstein - 5:27 pm
Q: subdomains are case sensitive, right?
evan t - 5:42 pm
A: Subdomains are not case sensitive.
_________________________________________________________________
Andrea Moro - 5:21 pm
Q: About the robots.txt: I read today a deep post in the
net where is specified that whenever gbot is unable to get
back result for an existent robots.txt file in a shorten time,
google crawler start to ignore web site page indexing. This
sound a bit strange.
John Mueller - 5:42 pm
A: If we are not sure whether or not we are allowed to crawl
a site, we might play it safe and not crawl the site. Of course
if the robots.txt is unreachable, chances are the rest of
your site might be too (which is bad).
_________________________________________________________________
Quentin Muhlert - 5:20 pm
Q: Does Google support or plan to support hCard microformats?
John Mueller - 5:42 pm
A: I'm not aware of changes in that regard, but we are always
open to new ideas!
_________________________________________________________________
Brian LaFrance - 5:38 pm
Q: I have a site that's never been indexed. I had someone
from Google look at it at SMX West and they couldn't find
anything wrong. There are links pointing at it and Yahoo &
MSN have it fully indexed with no probs. Any ideas why it
could be like that?
Reid Yokoyama - 5:42 pm
A: Hi Brian - we don't have time today to troubleshoot your
site. Try asking your question in the Webmaster Help group
where webmasters and Googlers alike might be able to take
a deeper look: http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help
_________________________________________________________________
Alfred Michael - 5:20 pm
Q: My blog moved to a new domain, but I still have both blogs
running with the same content, so that old visitors dont miss
my blog.... Is this treated as duplicate content ?
John Mueller - 5:43 pm
A: I would recommend moving old content to the new blog and
using a 301 redirect to move users to the new site. This helps
us & users to keep track of things.
_________________________________________________________________
Angela Vedar - 5:39 pm
Q: Does Google crawl all the links in a submitted sitemap?
If a sitemap, with no errors, is only partially indexed, what
could be the meaning behind this?
Susan Moskwa - 5:43 pm
A: A Sitemap isn't a guarantee of either crawling or indexing;
it's just an additional way of making sure Google knows about
the URLs you'd like crawled. I'd start here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=8524
_________________________________________________________________
Alan Rothstein - 5:22 pm
Q: Is there a way to see search listings from the past? To
see how ranked yesterday or the day before for example?
John Mueller - 5:43 pm
A: Not at the moment, but that's an interesting idea!
_________________________________________________________________
c6rentin merot - 5:40 pm
Q: Why doesn't google news crawlers rely on syndication feeds
?
Matt Cutts - 5:43 pm
A: I think when Google News started (2002?) syndication feeds
weren't as common as they are today. On the bright side, Google
News does provide RSS/Atom feed output that you can subscribe
to.
_________________________________________________________________
Russ Ain - 5:22 pm
Q: How often are the external links updated in Webmaster
Central? I've seen instances of links no longer being reported
there, even though they still exist
John Mueller - 5:43 pm
A: These are updated regularly, though it is impossible to
give a hard timeline.
_________________________________________________________________
Gordy Harrower - 5:40 pm
Q: Do Google tools help a site's ranking?
Mariya Moeva - 5:43 pm
A: Hi Gordy! The most important thing to focus on is the
quality of your site and the content that you provide for
users
_________________________________________________________________
Chris Hornak - 5:22 pm
Q: With the increasing amount of sites using nofollow tags.
Is google looking at those links and taking anything away,
like anchor text?
John Mueller - 5:44 pm
A: We ignore links that have the rel=nofollow microformat.
_________________________________________________________________
Quentin Muhlert - 5:41 pm
Q: If i'm moving URL's and the old URL is still in Google,
but 301'ed to the new location - should I use the Google URL
removal process or just wait for googlebot to figure it out?
Susan Moskwa - 5:44 pm
A: You can wait for Google to figure it out. You don't need
to use the URL removal tool unless your removal is urgent.
_________________________________________________________________
brian vastola - 5:42 pm
Q: i there a way to have a google person look over your site
and see whats wrong with it?
Mariya Moeva - 5:43 pm
A: Hi Brian,
Mariya Moeva - 5:44 pm
A: If you'd like someone to take a look at your site, feel
free to post in our Webmaster Help group -- lots of Googlers
and savvy webmasters are there ready to help you (:
_________________________________________________________________
Amy Bright - 5:41 pm
Q: WHY are rankings fluctuating by the minute sometimes????
Matt Cutts - 5:44 pm
A: Amy, we really do crawl that fast at times, so if someone
else does a new blog post or if there's breaking news that
causes new web pages to show up on the web, that can cause
our rankings to change pretty quickly. When I started, it
was more like monthly.
_________________________________________________________________
Don Son - 5:23 pm
Q: Currently the SiteLinks displayed for my site aren't very
helpful for users. Does the design of my site effect how these
links are compiled? What can I do to help Google compile better
SiteLinks?
John Mueller - 5:44 pm
A: You can have bad sitelinks removed in your Webmaster Tools
account & give general feedback while doing that.
_________________________________________________________________
Jeff James - 5:40 pm
Q: does adsense lead to better indexing and rank? Most of
trip advsior's pages are really thin content Google ads.
Bergy Berghausen - 5:45 pm
A: The presence of adsense is not a factor in ranking.
_________________________________________________________________
Jeremy L - 5:22 pm
Q: why is search history more secure than things like adsense,
google checkout, adwords, which has to do with real $$$. The
$$$ items need secondary passwords
John Mueller - 5:45 pm
A: I'll pass that on to the appropriate team, Jeremy.
_________________________________________________________________
Lani Castro - 5:41 pm
Q: matt, I accidentally sent a question to just yourself,
are you able to get that? Or should I ask to all panelists
again?
Pedro Dias - 5:45 pm
A: Hi Lani, having a question sent directly to Matt it's
less likely to get an answer.
_________________________________________________________________
Carlos RodrÌguez - 5:34 pm
Q: Google read correctly ajax sites?
evan t - 5:45 pm
A: Hi Carlos, please see our blog on ajax/flash http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/11/spiders-view-of-web-20.html
_________________________________________________________________
Josh Perfetto - 5:22 pm
Q: Abhijeet: Is that update period just for the toolbar,
or for search results as well? What's the time it takes for
page rank changes to affect search results?
John Mueller - 5:45 pm
A: Our search results are updated all the time! The pagerank
in the toolbar however is only updated a few times a year.
_________________________________________________________________
Michael Nguyen - 5:42 pm
Q: Does removing your site's low value pages from the index
help the other pages rank better?
Matt Cutts - 5:45 pm
A: If they are just regular web pages, I wouldn't remove
them. If they were really spammy or doorway pages and you
suspect that it could have affected your site's ranking or
reputation, then I would remove any spammy pages.
_________________________________________________________________
Manuel Merz - 5:41 pm
Q: If I submit a sitemap.xml file in the webmaster tools
do I still need to clarify the path in the robots.txt as well?
Bergy Berghausen - 5:45 pm
A: For Google--nope... but you may want to put it there anyway
for other robots who may be interested.
_________________________________________________________________
Russ Ain - 5:44 pm
Q: Thoughts on the strength of DMOZ?
Matt Cutts - 5:46 pm
A: If you can get a DMOZ link it's helpful, but there's no
special "DMOZ boost" or anything like that.
_________________________________________________________________
Rabin Acharya - 5:23 pm
Q: is search history and user behavior vis-a-vis CTR in private
site going to be used in the Organic Search?
John Mueller - 5:46 pm
A: I'm sorry but I don't understand the question. Can you
rephrase it?
_________________________________________________________________
Peter Faber - 5:49 pm
Q: Is there somebody in the panel that can answer questions
about Adwords?
Susan Moskwa - 5:47 pm
A: No, we're only dealing with organic search issues. I'd
recommend posting your question in the AdWords Help Group.
_________________________________________________________________
jeremy rivera - 5:44 pm
Q: Is data and information that is sent Via RSS given preference
over content that has been discovered by Googlebot?
Matt Cutts - 5:47 pm
A: We normally crawl normal/static web pages. Most users
don't want RSS to show up in their search results at all.
_________________________________________________________________
Greg Niland - 5:27 pm
Q: when comparing keyword A and keyword B why does google
trends and google adwords disagree on which provides a higher
traffic level?
Matt Dougherty - 5:47 pm
A: Hi Greg, This would be a better question for our Trends
or AdWords support teams. Try dropping by one or both of their
Help Groups.
_________________________________________________________________
tim gill - 5:23 pm
Q: Under webmaster the crawl rate trails by how many days
on average?
John Mueller - 5:47 pm
A: The graph is usually fairly up to date, though the labels
might be slightly off to the side.
_________________________________________________________________
Tim Dineen - 5:46 pm
Q: Susan, re: ask a friend... I'm pretty knowledgeable myself
and I know there is no issue on our end. But I just want a
method to ask questions without competitors viewing the discussion.
Can a Google Group be private?
Susan Moskwa - 5:48 pm
A: There's no way to post privately in our group. This is
in order to help as many people as possible. (If I answer
a question privately, I've helped 1 webmaster; but if I answer
it publicly, I've help anyone who sees that thread in the
future)
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Jake FIelds - 5:23 pm
Q: Is there a review process related to reviews in personalized
search, i have reviewed local businesses then did not see
those reviews posted
John Mueller - 5:48 pm
A: We use data from various sources, but it might take some
time for it to propogate to us.
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Kunal Shah - 5:45 pm
Q: hey, I need to know, why I cannot write any genuine comments
in Matt Cutts blogs
Matt Cutts - 5:48 pm
A: I use Akismet, so it might be the case that Akismet is
doing something. But I have a comment policy that comments
have to be >1 line, constructive, etc.
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Brian Ussery - 5:46 pm
Q: When you change robots.txt, can creating a new link from
another domain cause Google to check the robots.txt help speed
up Google noticing the change in robots.txt?
Susan Moskwa - 5:49 pm
A: Googlebot always checks your robots.txt file before crawling
your site, so you don't need to link to it (we'll check it
when we need to crawl your site).
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Adam Hayes - 5:21 pm
Q: How does google index reviews (I noticed that when I get
a map of a specific business it gives a link to reviews)?
Is there a specific microformat that is best?
John Mueller - 5:49 pm
A: We pull this data from only a few sources, I'm not aware
of ways to import it directly from your website.
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Geoff Merrick - 5:47 pm
Q: We are changing the name of our site which has been live
for some time. Do you have some best practice suggestions
for making the switch as smooth as possible from a search-results
perspective?
Reid Yokoyama - 5:49 pm
A: Hey Geoff - check out our recent blog post about best
practices when moving a site:
Reid Yokoyama - 5:49 pm
A: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html
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Adam Szelepa - 5:46 pm
Q: Q: hi, i got a website, a month ago my website was on
on the first page on google after entering keywords, but now
if i right the same kyewords in google my bebsite dosen't
appear at all. why? my web site is crowled every 3 days! any
reason why is happing
Susan Moskwa - 5:49 pm
A: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=8524
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Wall-E The Robot - 5:38 pm
Q: I didn't dial any number - I just typed my cell phone
number on this webex thing, received a call and voila!
Pedro Dias - 5:49 pm
A: please guys, use the chat section to chat :)
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Rabin Acharya - 5:45 pm
Q: i am wondering why is it that the sites that are ranked
high in google is not ranked at all in yahoo and m
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