As an addendum to that post, I thought I'd share my notes about the
questions I received while at PubCon along with some answers. Before
diving into the questions and answers, I'd like to send a shout out to
longtime group member Red Cardinal, who I met at Pubcon. He has a
great sense of humor and the uncanny ability to cut through vagaries
and pin people down on the facts. This made for a lively conversation
at the "Reception with the Google Engineers" which I thoroughly
enjoyed. Now let's look at some questions, shall we?
-------
Q: What should I do about scraper sites that copy my content and use
my site's domain name in their URLs?
A: Most of the time scraper sites aren't a problem because they don't
rank as well in Google's search results as the site that released the
original content. Also, Google's been getting more aggressive on
kicking scraping sites out of our index. Still, scrapers haven't
disappeared and most webmasters I talk with view scrapers as a
nuisance that has to be tolerated as a result of having a popular
site. I've even heard webmasters say things like "once your website
starts getting scraped, you know you're getting somewhere." As the
saying goes...imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Scrapers do
become more of a concern in the rare case where the scraper site ranks
better in Google's search results than the site from which it is
copying content. If you find yourself in this situation, you've got
options that range from changes you can make on your site to the more
serious step of filing a DMCA take down notice or taking other legal
action. Changes you can make to your site that make things difficult
for scrapers are doing things like adding extra links back to your
content and hotlinking your images to an image library that you can
change as often as you want. On the other end of the spectrum when
you're dealing with persistent and egregious copyright violators, you
can report the site using the "Report spam in our index"
form in Webmaster Tools
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport and you can file a DMCA take down notice with Google and other search
engines. You can get more info on Google's DMCA process here:
http://www.google.com/dmca.html Finally if you'd like to get an idea of what other webmasters
are doing to deal with scrapers I suggest doing a Google
search for [dealing with content scrapers] (without the brackets.)
----
Q: My manager says our company's site is getting enough promotion
through search engine contextual advertising. Does my site need SEO
type improvements if it's already well advertised?
A: Don't just roll the dice, make it a sure bet. Addressing issues
that impact the ability of search engines to crawl and rank your site
will help ensure that your site is included in the organic results of
most search engines for the topics your site covers. If your site
appears in the organic search results and at the same time there's
also an ad for your site displayed on the same page, then you've just
increased the chances that the person doing the search will visit your
site.
----
Q: I've been tasked with optimizing an existing site that is fairly
large and utilizes a custom CMS system. Should I just focus on
improving the most popular pages to which we'd like to attract new
visitors?
A: If possible you should focus on making the entire site accessible,
useful and compelling. If there are areas that you'd like to exclude
from search you can use a robots.txt file to block these areas or
implement a noindex,nofollow Meta element on each page you'd like to
exclude.
----
Q: What's the best way for a webmaster to keep up with blog posts and
other web based news covering their website?
A: There are lots of ways to do this. Two good ways that you can track
web based mentions of your site using Google products are:
- Subscribe to Google Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts - Subscribe to an RSS feed based on a Google Blog Search:
http://blogsearch.google.com ----
Q: Do you guys want my SEO service to SEO your Help Center content?
A: We've made considerable improvements to the Webmaster Help Center
in regards to searching and finding helpful content. We're always
interested in thoughts you might have about how the Webmaster Help
Center could be improved, so please post your ideas to the Webmaster
Help Group.
----
Q: I use a contextual advertising program on my website. Should I be
worried about distracting my visitors from my own content?
A: The choice to leverage advertising is a decision that each site
owner should decide for themselves. One bit of advice I have is not to
overdo your site's advertising to the point where your site's visitors
are so bombarded that they have trouble finding your lovingly created
content.
----
Q: I inherited a website that has some hidden text that was supposedly
added as an administrative only navigational link. I've had it removed
but I still think my site is penalized.
A: I'm glad to see you've changed your ways :) Seriously...as the web
continues to mature, the situation of inheriting management of
existing web sites is becoming more common. If you find cases where
the Google Webmaster Guidelines haven't been followed on a website
that you manage, update any problems so that the website is in
compliance with the Webmaster Guidelines and then file a
reconsideration request using the form in Webmaster Tools.
Here is more information on requesting reconsideration:
http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843 ----
Q: Is it a good practice to load everything on the homepage like all
of the CSS and JavaScript used by my site? Don't externally linked CSS
and JavaScript files load only once into the browser cache and then
are just available to be leveraged by the rest of the pages on the
site?
A: There are good and bad ways to implement CSS and JavaScript that
depend on what you're trying to accomplish, so I'll put that part of
the question aside to focus on the larger question of page load time.
I like pages that load quickly as do most website visitors. Does your
homepage load fast or do your visitors have time to fold up an origami
roulette wheel while your homepage slowly appears? My general advice
on this topic is to keep your total homepage file size as small as
possible. Then test your homepage's load time using different browsers
and platforms, including mobile browsers. You can use an analytics
package to help you determine what browsers and platforms the majority
of your visitors are using so that you can optimize for your website
accordingly.
----
Q: I run multiple analytics products on my website. The visitor
numbers reported by these products are all different.
A: Most analytics packages are implemented in slightly different ways
and thus you'll usually see different numbers when comparing the
reports they generate. A good step (short of running a test to see
which is most accurate) is to just use an average across the different
numbers you are trying to reconcile. If you'd like to dig deeper into
comparisons of analytics products, check out Stone Temple's "2007 Web
Analytics Shootout":
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/analytics-report-may-2007.shtml ----
Q: I run Google Analytics. Should I be worried that Google could use
this for ranking information or setting AdWords prices?
A: No.
----
Q: I try to spider my website with crawlers like Xenu but every time I
try the crawler crashes. Is this a bad sign? Oh yeah I also noticed
that my homepage is accessible via 200+ different URLs based on a
variety of parameters that can be added to my website's base domain
name. Could this be the problem?
A: If Xenu is crashing then your site most probably has some issues.
The first thing it sounds like you need to do is to implement a server
side 301 redirect for all the 200+ URLs that point to your homepage so
that they all resolve to one URL. After implementing this I'd retest
crawling the site with Xenu to see if it can complete a full crawl of
your site. If you have other pages that have numerous URLs all
pointing to the same place, you may find that you have to implement
301 redirects for these pages as well. Finally I suggest that you
check out the "Web crawl" diagnostics tool in Google Webmaster
Tools which will show you if Google's crawler is encountering any
crawling issues on your website.
----
Q: If I have a white hat site that doesn't engage in link buying or
selling, but my page rank went down around the time that link sellers'
sites' PageRank went down across the board, what should I be looking
to change on my site to correct this issue?
A: Are you potentially linking out to bad neighborhoods? If not, maybe
visitors to your site are adding links to bad neighborhoods. Make sure
that if you have an area of your site that allows users to post
content, that you either don't allow links or ensure that all links
added to this area are nofollowed. Another possibility to consider is
that after the drop in PageRank there's less PageRank to go around in
some "neighborhoods", so even if your site wasn't engaging in any bad
practices, if sites that link to you got their PageRank lowered then
it could naturally affect your PageRank in return.
----
Q: If I charge for membership to parts of my site and I link to my
members, are these paid links?
A: If you could imagine that SEOs and webmasters may attempt to game
your membership for links then I'd use a nofollow attribute on these
links to be on the safe side.
----
Holy cow - I'm actually laughing to myself thinking about some of the
laughs we had at that table. We were still laughing the following day
at the PubCon thinking about it.
Well done on being so down to earth and frank with the whole
conversation - it was good meeting one of the blue badges from here
(and for a change I didn't have a rant about the groups at Matt
Cutts :) ).
> As an addendum to that post, I thought I'd share my notes about the
> questions I received while at PubCon along with some answers. Before
> diving into the questions and answers, I'd like to send a shout out to
> longtime group member Red Cardinal, who I met at Pubcon. He has a
> great sense of humor and the uncanny ability to cut through vagaries
> and pin people down on the facts. This made for a lively conversation
> at the "Reception with the Google Engineers" which I thoroughly
> enjoyed. Now let's look at some questions, shall we?
> -------
> Q: What should I do about scraper sites that copy my content and use
> my site's domain name in their URLs?
> A: Most of the time scraper sites aren't a problem because they don't
> rank as well in Google's search results as the site that released the
> original content. Also, Google's been getting more aggressive on
> kicking scraping sites out of our index. Still, scrapers haven't
> disappeared and most webmasters I talk with view scrapers as a
> nuisance that has to be tolerated as a result of having a popular
> site. I've even heard webmasters say things like "once your website
> starts getting scraped, you know you're getting somewhere." As the
> saying goes...imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Scrapers do
> become more of a concern in the rare case where the scraper site ranks
> better in Google's search results than the site from which it is
> copying content. If you find yourself in this situation, you've got
> options that range from changes you can make on your site to the more
> serious step of filing a DMCA take down notice or taking other legal
> action. Changes you can make to your site that make things difficult
> for scrapers are doing things like adding extra links back to your
> content and hotlinking your images to an image library that you can
> change as often as you want. On the other end of the spectrum when
> you're dealing with persistent and egregious copyright violators, you
> can report the site using the "Report spam in our index"
> form in Webmaster Toolshttps://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport > and you can file a DMCA take down notice with Google and other search
> engines. You can get more info on Google's DMCA process here:http://www.google.com/dmca.html > Finally if you'd like to get an idea of what other webmasters
> are doing to deal with scrapers I suggest doing a Google
> search for [dealing with content scrapers] (without the brackets.)
> ----
> Q: My manager says our company's site is getting enough promotion
> through search engine contextual advertising. Does my site need SEO
> type improvements if it's already well advertised?
> A: Don't just roll the dice, make it a sure bet. Addressing issues
> that impact the ability of search engines to crawl and rank your site
> will help ensure that your site is included in the organic results of
> most search engines for the topics your site covers. If your site
> appears in the organic search results and at the same time there's
> also an ad for your site displayed on the same page, then you've just
> increased the chances that the person doing the search will visit your
> site.
> ----
> Q: I've been tasked with optimizing an existing site that is fairly
> large and utilizes a custom CMS system. Should I just focus on
> improving the most popular pages to which we'd like to attract new
> visitors?
> A: If possible you should focus on making the entire site accessible,
> useful and compelling. If there are areas that you'd like to exclude
> from search you can use a robots.txt file to block these areas or
> implement a noindex,nofollow Meta element on each page you'd like to
> exclude.
> ----
> Q: What's the best way for a webmaster to keep up with blog posts and
> other web based news covering their website?
> A: There are lots of ways to do this. Two good ways that you can track
> web based mentions of your site using Google products are:
> - Subscribe to Google Alerts:http://www.google.com/alerts > - Subscribe to an RSS feed based on a Google Blog Search:http://blogsearch.google.com > ----
> Q: Do you guys want my SEO service to SEO your Help Center content?
> A: We've made considerable improvements to the Webmaster Help Center
> in regards to searching and finding helpful content. We're always
> interested in thoughts you might have about how the Webmaster Help
> Center could be improved, so please post your ideas to the Webmaster
> Help Group.
> ----
> Q: I use a contextual advertising program on my website. Should I be
> worried about distracting my visitors from my own content?
> A: The choice to leverage advertising is a decision that each site
> owner should decide for themselves. One bit of advice I have is not to
> overdo your site's advertising to the point where your site's visitors
> are so bombarded that they have trouble finding your lovingly created
> content.
> ----
> Q: I inherited a website that has some hidden text that was supposedly
> added as an administrative only navigational link. I've had it removed
> but I still think my site is penalized.
> A: I'm glad to see you've changed your ways :) Seriously...as the web
> continues to mature, the situation of inheriting management of
> existing web sites is becoming more common. If you find cases where
> the Google Webmaster Guidelines haven't been followed on a website
> that you manage, update any problems so that the website is in
> compliance with the Webmaster Guidelines and then file a
> reconsideration request using the form in Webmaster Tools.
> Here is more information on requesting reconsideration:http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843 > ----
> Q: Is it a good practice to load everything on the homepage like all
> of the CSS and JavaScript used by my site? Don't externally linked CSS
> and JavaScript files load only once into the browser cache and then
> are just available to be leveraged by the rest of the pages on the
> site?
> A: There are good and bad ways to implement CSS and JavaScript that
> depend on what you're trying to accomplish, so I'll put that part of
> the question aside to focus on the larger question of page load time.
> I like pages that load quickly as do most website visitors. Does your
> homepage load fast or do your visitors have time to fold up an origami
> roulette wheel while your homepage slowly appears? My general advice
> on this topic is to keep your total homepage file size as small as
> possible. Then test your homepage's load time using different browsers
> and platforms, including mobile browsers. You can use an analytics
> package to help you determine what browsers and platforms the majority
> of your visitors are using so that you can optimize for your website
> accordingly.
> ----
> Q: I run multiple analytics products on my website. The visitor
> numbers reported by these products are all different.
> A: Most analytics packages are implemented in slightly different ways
> and thus you'll usually see different numbers when comparing the
> reports they generate. A good step (short of running a test to see
> which is most accurate) is to just use an average across the different
> numbers you are trying to reconcile. If you'd like to dig deeper into
> comparisons of analytics products, check out Stone Temple's "2007 Web
> Analytics Shootout":http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/analytics-report-may-2007.shtml > ----
> Q: I run Google Analytics. Should I be worried that Google could use
> this for ranking information or setting AdWords prices?
> A: No.
> ----
> Q: I try to spider my website with crawlers like Xenu but every time I
> try the crawler crashes. Is this a bad sign? Oh yeah I also noticed
> that my homepage is accessible via 200+ different URLs based on a
> variety of parameters that can be added to my website's base domain
> name. Could this be the problem?
> A: If Xenu is crashing then your site most probably has some issues.
> The first thing it sounds like you need to do is to implement a server
> side 301 redirect for all the 200+ URLs that point to your homepage so
> that they all resolve to one URL. After implementing this I'd retest
> crawling the site with Xenu to see if it can complete a full crawl of
> your site. If you have other pages that have numerous URLs all
> pointing to the same place, you may find that you have to implement
> 301 redirects for these pages as well. Finally I suggest that you
> check out the "Web crawl" diagnostics tool in Google Webmaster
> Tools which will show you if Google's crawler is encountering any
> crawling issues on your website.
> ----
> Q: If I have a white hat site that doesn't engage in link buying or
> selling, but my page rank went down around the time that link sellers'
> sites' PageRank went down across the board, what should I be looking
> to change on my site to correct this issue?
> A: Are you potentially linking out to bad neighborhoods? If not, maybe
> visitors to your site are adding links to bad neighborhoods. Make sure
> that if you have an area of your site that allows users to post
> As an addendum to that post, I thought I'd share my notes about the
> questions I received while at PubCon along with some answers. Before
> diving into the questions and answers, I'd like to send a shout out to
> longtime group member Red Cardinal, who I met at Pubcon. He has a
> great sense of humor and the uncanny ability to cut through vagaries
> and pin people down on the facts. This made for a lively conversation
> at the "Reception with the Google Engineers" which I thoroughly
> enjoyed. Now let's look at some questions, shall we?
> -------
> Q: What should I do about scraper sites that copy my content and use
> my site's domain name in their URLs?
> A: Most of the time scraper sites aren't a problem because they don't
> rank as well in Google's search results as the site that released the
> original content. Also, Google's been getting more aggressive on
> kicking scraping sites out of our index. Still, scrapers haven't
> disappeared and most webmasters I talk with view scrapers as a
> nuisance that has to be tolerated as a result of having a popular
> site. I've even heard webmasters say things like "once your website
> starts getting scraped, you know you're getting somewhere." As the
> saying goes...imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Scrapers do
> become more of a concern in the rare case where the scraper site ranks
> better in Google's search results than the site from which it is
> copying content. If you find yourself in this situation, you've got
> options that range from changes you can make on your site to the more
> serious step of filing a DMCA take down notice or taking other legal
> action. Changes you can make to your site that make things difficult
> for scrapers are doing things like adding extra links back to your
> content and hotlinking your images to an image library that you can
> change as often as you want. On the other end of the spectrum when
> you're dealing with persistent and egregious copyright violators, you
> can report the site using the "Report spam in our index"
> form in Webmaster Toolshttps://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport > and you can file a DMCA take down notice with Google and other search
> engines. You can get more info on Google's DMCA process here:http://www.google.com/dmca.html > Finally if you'd like to get an idea of what other webmasters
> are doing to deal with scrapers I suggest doing a Google
> search for [dealing with content scrapers] (without the brackets.)
> ----
> Q: My manager says our company's site is getting enough promotion
> through search engine contextual advertising. Does my site need SEO
> type improvements if it's already well advertised?
> A: Don't just roll the dice, make it a sure bet. Addressing issues
> that impact the ability of search engines to crawl and rank your site
> will help ensure that your site is included in the organic results of
> most search engines for the topics your site covers. If your site
> appears in the organic search results and at the same time there's
> also an ad for your site displayed on the same page, then you've just
> increased the chances that the person doing the search will visit your
> site.
> ----
> Q: I've been tasked with optimizing an existing site that is fairly
> large and utilizes a custom CMS system. Should I just focus on
> improving the most popular pages to which we'd like to attract new
> visitors?
> A: If possible you should focus on making the entire site accessible,
> useful and compelling. If there are areas that you'd like to exclude
> from search you can use a robots.txt file to block these areas or
> implement a noindex,nofollow Meta element on each page you'd like to
> exclude.
> ----
> Q: What's the best way for a webmaster to keep up with blog posts and
> other web based news covering their website?
> A: There are lots of ways to do this. Two good ways that you can track
> web based mentions of your site using Google products are:
> - Subscribe to Google Alerts:http://www.google.com/alerts > - Subscribe to an RSS feed based on a Google Blog Search:http://blogsearch.google.com > ----
> Q: Do you guys want my SEO service to SEO your Help Center content?
> A: We've made considerable improvements to the Webmaster Help Center
> in regards to searching and finding helpful content. We're always
> interested in thoughts you might have about how the Webmaster Help
> Center could be improved, so please post your ideas to the Webmaster
> Help Group.
> ----
> Q: I use a contextual advertising program on my website. Should I be
> worried about distracting my visitors from my own content?
> A: The choice to leverage advertising is a decision that each site
> owner should decide for themselves. One bit of advice I have is not to
> overdo your site's advertising to the point where your site's visitors
> are so bombarded that they have trouble finding your lovingly created
> content.
> ----
> Q: I inherited a website that has some hidden text that was supposedly
> added as an administrative only navigational link. I've had it removed
> but I still think my site is penalized.
> A: I'm glad to see you've changed your ways :) Seriously...as the web
> continues to mature, the situation of inheriting management of
> existing web sites is becoming more common. If you find cases where
> the Google Webmaster Guidelines haven't been followed on a website
> that you manage, update any problems so that the website is in
> compliance with the Webmaster Guidelines and then file a
> reconsideration request using the form in Webmaster Tools.
> Here is more information on requesting reconsideration:http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843 > ----
> Q: Is it a good practice to load everything on the homepage like all
> of the CSS and JavaScript used by my site? Don't externally linked CSS
> and JavaScript files load only once into the browser cache and then
> are just available to be leveraged by the rest of the pages on the
> site?
> A: There are good and bad ways to implement CSS and JavaScript that
> depend on what you're trying to accomplish, so I'll put that part of
> the question aside to focus on the larger question of page load time.
> I like pages that load quickly as do most website visitors. Does your
> homepage load fast or do your visitors have time to fold up an origami
> roulette wheel while your homepage slowly appears? My general advice
> on this topic is to keep your total homepage file size as small as
> possible. Then test your homepage's load time using different browsers
> and platforms, including mobile browsers. You can use an analytics
> package to help you determine what browsers and platforms the majority
> of your visitors are using so that you can optimize for your website
> accordingly.
> ----
> Q: I run multiple analytics products on my website. The visitor
> numbers reported by these products are all different.
> A: Most analytics packages are implemented in slightly different ways
> and thus you'll usually see different numbers when comparing the
> reports they generate. A good step (short of running a test to see
> which is most accurate) is to just use an average across the different
> numbers you are trying to reconcile. If you'd like to dig deeper into
> comparisons of analytics products, check out Stone Temple's "2007 Web
> Analytics Shootout":http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/analytics-report-may-2007.shtml > ----
> Q: I run Google Analytics. Should I be worried that Google could use
> this for ranking information or setting AdWords prices?
> A: No.
> ----
> Q: I try to spider my website with crawlers like Xenu but every time I
> try the crawler crashes. Is this a bad sign? Oh yeah I also noticed
> that my homepage is accessible via 200+ different URLs based on a
> variety of parameters that can be added to my website's base domain
> name. Could this be the problem?
> A: If Xenu is crashing then your site most probably has some issues.
> The first thing it sounds like you need to do is to implement a server
> side 301 redirect for all the 200+ URLs that point to your homepage so
> that they all resolve to one URL. After implementing this I'd retest
> crawling the site with Xenu to see if it can complete a full crawl of
> your site. If you have other pages that have numerous URLs all
> pointing to the same place, you may find that you have to implement
> 301 redirects for these pages as well. Finally I suggest that you
> check out the "Web crawl" diagnostics tool in Google Webmaster
> Tools which will show you if Google's crawler is encountering any
> crawling issues on your website.
> ----
> Q: If I have a white hat site that doesn't engage in link buying or
> selling, but my page rank went down around the time that link sellers'
> sites' PageRank went down across the board, what should I be looking
> to change on my site to correct this issue?
> A: Are you potentially linking out to bad neighborhoods? If not, maybe
> visitors to your site are adding links to bad neighborhoods. Make sure
> that if you have an area of your site that allows users to post
> content, that you either don't allow links or ensure that all links
> added to this area are nofollowed. Another possibility to consider is
> that after the drop in PageRank there's less PageRank to go around in
> some "neighborhoods", so even if your site wasn't engaging in any bad
> practices, if sites that link to you got their PageRank
> Q: Do you guys want my SEO service to SEO your Help Center content?
> A: We've made considerable improvements to the Webmaster Help Center
> in regards to searching and finding helpful content. We're always
> interested in thoughts you might have about how the Webmaster Help
> Center could be improved, so please post your ideas to the Webmaster
> Help Group.
One thing I think could use help in this area, although not
necessarily for SEO'ing the help center but more so, for this Group's
FAQs is to add a link to the webmaster guidelines on every page
possible.
I thought in the past that I could easily find a link to the webmaster
guidelines but now it seems I can only find it by following a link in
this group's FAQ to the Webmaster Help center.
Of course I could just be going blind. :-()
Other than that though, thanks very much for the update on what is
happening out there and the questions that people are asking.
One thing though, it is a shame to see all those people having to go
pay money to find answers to things that they could have gotten here
for free. :-() Almost all the questions listed have been asked here
a time or two. ;-)
> As an addendum to that post, I thought I'd share my notes about the
> questions I received while at PubCon along with some answers. Before
> diving into the questions and answers, I'd like to send a shout out to
> longtime group member Red Cardinal, who I met at Pubcon. He has a
> great sense of humor and the uncanny ability to cut through vagaries
> and pin people down on the facts. This made for a lively conversation
> at the "Reception with the Google Engineers" which I thoroughly
> enjoyed. Now let's look at some questions, shall we?
> -------
> Q: What should I do about scraper sites that copy my content and use
> my site's domain name in their URLs?
> A: Most of the time scraper sites aren't a problem because they don't
> rank as well in Google's search results as the site that released the
> original content. Also, Google's been getting more aggressive on
> kicking scraping sites out of our index. Still, scrapers haven't
> disappeared and most webmasters I talk with view scrapers as a
> nuisance that has to be tolerated as a result of having a popular
> site. I've even heard webmasters say things like "once your website
> starts getting scraped, you know you're getting somewhere." As the
> saying goes...imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Scrapers do
> become more of a concern in the rare case where the scraper site ranks
> better in Google's search results than the site from which it is
> copying content. If you find yourself in this situation, you've got
> options that range from changes you can make on your site to the more
> serious step of filing a DMCA take down notice or taking other legal
> action. Changes you can make to your site that make things difficult
> for scrapers are doing things like adding extra links back to your
> content and hotlinking your images to an image library that you can
> change as often as you want. On the other end of the spectrum when
> you're dealing with persistent and egregious copyright violators, you
> can report the site using the "Report spam in our index"
> form in Webmaster Toolshttps://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport > and you can file a DMCA take down notice with Google and other search
> engines. You can get more info on Google's DMCA process here:http://www.google.com/dmca.html > Finally if you'd like to get an idea of what other webmasters
> are doing to deal with scrapers I suggest doing a Google
> search for [dealing with content scrapers] (without the brackets.)
> ----
> Q: My manager says our company's site is getting enough promotion
> through search engine contextual advertising. Does my site need SEO
> type improvements if it's already well advertised?
> A: Don't just roll the dice, make it a sure bet. Addressing issues
> that impact the ability of search engines to crawl and rank your site
> will help ensure that your site is included in the organic results of
> most search engines for the topics your site covers. If your site
> appears in the organic search results and at the same time there's
> also an ad for your site displayed on the same page, then you've just
> increased the chances that the person doing the search will visit your
> site.
> ----
> Q: I've been tasked with optimizing an existing site that is fairly
> large and utilizes a custom CMS system. Should I just focus on
> improving the most popular pages to which we'd like to attract new
> visitors?
> A: If possible you should focus on making the entire site accessible,
> useful and compelling. If there are areas that you'd like to exclude
> from search you can use a robots.txt file to block these areas or
> implement a noindex,nofollow Meta element on each page you'd like to
> exclude.
> ----
> Q: What's the best way for a webmaster to keep up with blog posts and
> other web based news covering their website?
> A: There are lots of ways to do this. Two good ways that you can track
> web based mentions of your site using Google products are:
> - Subscribe to Google Alerts:http://www.google.com/alerts > - Subscribe to an RSS feed based on a Google Blog Search:http://blogsearch.google.com > ----
> Q: Do you guys want my SEO service to SEO your Help Center content?
> A: We've made considerable improvements to the Webmaster Help Center
> in regards to searching and finding helpful content. We're always
> interested in thoughts you might have about how the Webmaster Help
> Center could be improved, so please post your ideas to the Webmaster
> Help Group.
> ----
> Q: I use a contextual advertising program on my website. Should I be
> worried about distracting my visitors from my own content?
> A: The choice to leverage advertising is a decision that each site
> owner should decide for themselves. One bit of advice I have is not to
> overdo your site's advertising to the point where your site's visitors
> are so bombarded that they have trouble finding your lovingly created
> content.
> ----
> Q: I inherited a website that has some hidden text that was supposedly
> added as an administrative only navigational link. I've had it removed
> but I still think my site is penalized.
> A: I'm glad to see you've changed your ways :) Seriously...as the web
> continues to mature, the situation of inheriting management of
> existing web sites is becoming more common. If you find cases where
> the Google Webmaster Guidelines haven't been followed on a website
> that you manage, update any problems so that the website is in
> compliance with the Webmaster Guidelines and then file a
> reconsideration request using the form in Webmaster Tools.
> Here is more information on requesting reconsideration:http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843 > ----
> Q: Is it a good practice to load everything on the homepage like all
> of the CSS and JavaScript used by my site? Don't externally linked CSS
> and JavaScript files load only once into the browser cache and then
> are just available to be leveraged by the rest of the pages on the
> site?
> A: There are good and bad ways to implement CSS and JavaScript that
> depend on what you're trying to accomplish, so I'll put that part of
> the question aside to focus on the larger question of page load time.
> I like pages that load quickly as do most website visitors. Does your
> homepage load fast or do your visitors have time to fold up an origami
> roulette wheel while your homepage slowly appears? My general advice
> on this topic is to keep your total homepage file size as small as
> possible. Then test your homepage's load time using different browsers
> and platforms, including mobile browsers. You can use an analytics
> package to help you determine what browsers and platforms the majority
> of your visitors are using so that you can optimize for your website
> accordingly.
> ----
> Q: I run multiple analytics products on my website. The visitor
> numbers reported by these products are all different.
> A: Most analytics packages are implemented in slightly different ways
> and thus you'll usually see different numbers when comparing the
> reports they generate. A good step (short of running a test to see
> which is most accurate) is to just use an average across the different
> numbers you are trying to reconcile. If you'd like to dig deeper into
> comparisons of analytics products, check out Stone Temple's "2007 Web
> Analytics Shootout":http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/analytics-report-may-2007.shtml > ----
> Q: I run Google Analytics. Should I be worried that Google could use
> this for ranking information or setting AdWords prices?
> A: No.
> ----
> Q: I try to spider my website with crawlers like Xenu but every time I
> try the crawler crashes. Is this a bad sign? Oh yeah I also noticed
> that my homepage is accessible via 200+ different URLs based on a
> variety of parameters that can be added to my website's base domain
> name. Could this be the problem?
> A: If Xenu is crashing then your site most probably has some issues.
> The first thing it sounds like you need to do is to implement a server
> side 301 redirect for all the 200+ URLs that point to your homepage so
> that they all resolve to one URL. After implementing this I'd retest
> crawling the site with Xenu to see if it can complete a full crawl of
> your site. If you have other pages that have numerous URLs all
THANK YOU for posting your PubCon notes. I was starting with a new
organization and couldn't take the time off to attend. I can't wait
for PubCon 2008.
> As an addendum to that post, I thought I'd share my notes about the
> questions I received while at PubCon along with some answers. Before
> diving into the questions and answers, I'd like to send a shout out to
> longtime group member Red Cardinal, who I met at Pubcon. He has a
> great sense of humor and the uncanny ability to cut through vagaries
> and pin people down on the facts. This made for a lively conversation
> at the "Reception with the Google Engineers" which I thoroughly
> enjoyed. Now let's look at some questions, shall we?
> -------
> Q: What should I do about scraper sites that copy my content and use
> my site's domain name in their URLs?
> A: Most of the time scraper sites aren't a problem because they don't
> rank as well in Google's search results as the site that released the
> original content. Also, Google's been getting more aggressive on
> kicking scraping sites out of our index. Still, scrapers haven't
> disappeared and most webmasters I talk with view scrapers as a
> nuisance that has to be tolerated as a result of having a popular
> site. I've even heard webmasters say things like "once your website
> starts getting scraped, you know you're getting somewhere." As the
> saying goes...imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Scrapers do
> become more of a concern in the rare case where the scraper site ranks
> better in Google's search results than the site from which it is
> copying content. If you find yourself in this situation, you've got
> options that range from changes you can make on your site to the more
> serious step of filing a DMCA take down notice or taking other legal
> action. Changes you can make to your site that make things difficult
> for scrapers are doing things like adding extra links back to your
> content and hotlinking your images to an image library that you can
> change as often as you want. On the other end of the spectrum when
> you're dealing with persistent and egregious copyright violators, you
> can report the site using the "Report spam in our index"
> form in Webmaster Toolshttps://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport > and you can file a DMCA take down notice with Google and other search
> engines. You can get more info on Google's DMCA process here:http://www.google.com/dmca.html > Finally if you'd like to get an idea of what other webmasters
> are doing to deal with scrapers I suggest doing a Google
> search for [dealing with content scrapers] (without the brackets.)
> ----
> Q: My manager says our company's site is getting enough promotion
> through search engine contextual advertising. Does my site need SEO
> type improvements if it's already well advertised?
> A: Don't just roll the dice, make it a sure bet. Addressing issues
> that impact the ability of search engines to crawl and rank your site
> will help ensure that your site is included in the organic results of
> most search engines for the topics your site covers. If your site
> appears in the organic search results and at the same time there's
> also an ad for your site displayed on the same page, then you've just
> increased the chances that the person doing the search will visit your
> site.
> ----
> Q: I've been tasked with optimizing an existing site that is fairly
> large and utilizes a custom CMS system. Should I just focus on
> improving the most popular pages to which we'd like to attract new
> visitors?
> A: If possible you should focus on making the entire site accessible,
> useful and compelling. If there are areas that you'd like to exclude
> from search you can use a robots.txt file to block these areas or
> implement a noindex,nofollow Meta element on each page you'd like to
> exclude.
> ----
> Q: What's the best way for a webmaster to keep up with blog posts and
> other web based news covering their website?
> A: There are lots of ways to do this. Two good ways that you can track
> web based mentions of your site using Google products are:
> - Subscribe to Google Alerts:http://www.google.com/alerts > - Subscribe to an RSS feed based on a Google Blog Search:http://blogsearch.google.com > ----
> Q: Do you guys want my SEO service to SEO your Help Center content?
> A: We've made considerable improvements to the Webmaster Help Center
> in regards to searching and finding helpful content. We're always
> interested in thoughts you might have about how the Webmaster Help
> Center could be improved, so please post your ideas to the Webmaster
> Help Group.
> ----
> Q: I use a contextual advertising program on my website. Should I be
> worried about distracting my visitors from my own content?
> A: The choice to leverage advertising is a decision that each site
> owner should decide for themselves. One bit of advice I have is not to
> overdo your site's advertising to the point where your site's visitors
> are so bombarded that they have trouble finding your lovingly created
> content.
> ----
> Q: I inherited a website that has some hidden text that was supposedly
> added as an administrative only navigational link. I've had it removed
> but I still think my site is penalized.
> A: I'm glad to see you've changed your ways :) Seriously...as the web
> continues to mature, the situation of inheriting management of
> existing web sites is becoming more common. If you find cases where
> the Google Webmaster Guidelines haven't been followed on a website
> that you manage, update any problems so that the website is in
> compliance with the Webmaster Guidelines and then file a
> reconsideration request using the form in Webmaster Tools.
> Here is more information on requesting reconsideration:http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843 > ----
> Q: Is it a good practice to load everything on the homepage like all
> of the CSS and JavaScript used by my site? Don't externally linked CSS
> and JavaScript files load only once into the browser cache and then
> are just available to be leveraged by the rest of the pages on the
> site?
> A: There are good and bad ways to implement CSS and JavaScript that
> depend on what you're trying to accomplish, so I'll put that part of
> the question aside to focus on the larger question of page load time.
> I like pages that load quickly as do most website visitors. Does your
> homepage load fast or do your visitors have time to fold up an origami
> roulette wheel while your homepage slowly appears? My general advice
> on this topic is to keep your total homepage file size as small as
> possible. Then test your homepage's load time using different browsers
> and platforms, including mobile browsers. You can use an analytics
> package to help you determine what browsers
