We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual info?
If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
- Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have been more useful to you? What's missing? - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? - What do you like best? - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you search?
Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate your ideas.
Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.
Thanks for stopping by. I know its not your fault, but this group has been asked for input before, many times actually, only to have the subject dropped with absolutely no follow up. See this thread started in January, then completely abandoned, we're still waiting for our pinned FAQ. http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Requests/browse_... So if you receive less than a desired response it may be that they've gone to the well to often or cried wolf, you choose the cliche.
> - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful?
Yes I use it often, I've got most important pages bookmarked so that I can quickly find them and send other to them. As far as accuracy goes, I'd have to defer to you on that, who am I to question the accuracy of what Google tells me about Google? It is easy to find the information that is there, but of course impossible to find the information that is not.
> - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > been more useful to you? What's missing?
This place used to be a great source of insight, but that's pretty much dried up, other than answers to the most benign questions (i.e. how to verify a site etc) For ground breaking news, the outside un- official seo blogs and forums seem to get the information from Google well before its brought up here by just a regular poster. What's missing is the most often asked questions and statements on the obvious. It's by far the most frustrating thing I see.
> - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center?
That when all else fails, they get sent here, where there really is no official answers at all, but they are under the impression they will get one. The same goes for the adsense and adwords teams that send people with questions here, expecting an answer from Google, only to be disappointed to find out they'll only get answers from mortal men and women.
I wish it was more like an actual help center, and not just a collection of pages. I'd see microsoft's help as an example. It walks you to the answer.
Forcing people to actually view a FAQ, search results for their question, a knowledge base, etc before dumping them here would help weed out the often asked questions.
I'd also love to see a list of subjects that Google WILL NOT EVER answer, so that people could be pointed there. Something like, we will not comment on: 1) why your site sucks for keyword1, keyword2, Keyword 2) What factors count and don't count in ranking 3) Why its okay for Yahoo to charge $299 for a link but bad for anyone else to sell links 4) when the next pagerank update is 5) what a -30, -950, MSSA penalty is. 6) if your site is penalized 7) why your site is penalized 8) How to fix your penalized site 9) Why you are number #1 for every word in the dictionary on Yahoo, MSN, hotbot, northernlight, lycos, exite, but not listed on google at all. 10) What a supplemental result is 11) How to get out of supplementals 12) Why the stats in my webmaster tools have said, "Data is not available at this time." since 1954. etc
> - What do you like best?
It's official, when I quote it, no one can argue.
> - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > search?
Browse, rarely search. Search is dependent on knowing what to search for. For example, just try to find information about sitelinks (a question asked here 10 times a day) without using the term sitelinks, it's nearly impossible.
Another complaint is this blog of yours, http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/. I don't know who thought up this concept, but they've never actually read a blog. Unless an article is on the front page its pretty much lost, since there is no navigation to find articles. Where are the categories??? Let's say I was wondering what's in the blog, who reads things based on date of publishing? I want to know the subjects, the categories of where the articles fall under. Oh sure it's got a search box, but that only works if you think that your subject is covered, or are looking for something specific. it certainly is not how people work their way through blogs.
And finally, probably the most often asked and unsatisfactorily answered question is HOW DO I CONTACT SOMEONE AT GOOGLE?. Please make an official statement that you cannot be contacted. We'll all gladly point people to that link 20 times a day and eventually it will sink in.
Although it is currently better than anything offerred by other search engines, i would agree with all said by JLH - however i sometimes wonder if a 5 min flash video on major topics would be more easily digestable than a plethroa of sub-links. (adwords have some pretty useful videos) It is also a bit boring to look at and maybe a few illustratrions/ graphics would help to make the information more digestable and sustain interest. e.g. for those intent on using hidden text/spamming you could have a web-master being machine-gunned up against a wall. Ok maybe a little extreme however the stopbadware site uses some very simple graphics to power home the message.
Not really. I use my own bookmarks. The problem is also that nobody notices when new things are added. You have to bookmark almost everything and even then you often don't realize that there are new articles on a particular subject. RSS feeds for everything + on particular keywords would be a good start. Also, the site does not use consistent URLs, just a detail, but depending on where you come from you end up with completely different URLs. This makes referencing it a bit harder (cut off the rest). Also, it's hard to get the normal web search to concentrate on the help-center. It would be neat to get a co- op feed to sign up that returns the results from the help-center in the top for known keywords. Darn, am I giving you too many ideas?
> and is the information accurate?
Mostly. Only you never know when information has been outdated and it's hard to recognize if an article has been obsoleted by a newer one (see above). Also - you never know when the answer is one based mostly on PR (public relations) or if it is the absolute truth. How far is it really, really like that? How far is the answer just something that Google would like webmasters to assume is correct?
Just an example: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34449 "There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index." "Following these recommendations may increase the likelihood that your site will show up consistently in the Google search results." Ok. So where does that leave us? I know you this is a question that really can't be answered, but it leaves everything sooo open. Is it really helping webmasters to know that? I don't know. It's hard :-)
I use it mostly as a reference. It is the only official source of information, as far as I know. Even the blog is not official enough to merit being referenced (with a "blogspot" domain ;-) - would that appear official to you?).
Switching over to the blog (while we're at it :-)): ... and the blog - including the sitemaps blog - is ... terrible with regards to crawling and indexing - has anyone ever tried to find something there? The old sitemaps blog is abandoned and inaccessible if you do not know which articles were posted there and search for them directly. It would have been great to get the new blog to include the old entries and (hey, you're Google) to be able to search for and find them :-). I have set up a CSE for the blog, but even that has trouble with the indexed URLs.
> - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > been more useful to you?
I like to use, promote and add to http://webmastershelp.iblogget.com/ :-). I like how it's independent (no advertising, no self-promotion) but still references the official sources. I enjoy putting information online that can help people with their problems. Of course the Google Groups is also a good source of cutting-edge information + all the other normal webmaster forums.
The problem is that I'm not the average webmaster and neither are the others that are active here in the groups. We know where to find and dig for information and we can often find out where there is no official information available (where you have to take everyone's comment with a grain of salt). The average webmaster can't. The average webmaster will be stumped with his problems and most likely won't even find the Google Groups to be able to ask for more information. And even if they do find the groups, I bet 99% refrain from posting their question for fear of looking stupid (which is completely unfounded! We're all here to learn).
> What's missing? > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center?
Hard to find information you need. Hard to know when the information is relevant and complete. Hard to find out when new information is added.
> - What do you like best?
That it exists :-). It's great to have a place where official information is available written in an understandable way. Search is good too. I like the interlinking, but have rarely used it.
> - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you search?
Search. Sometimes browse to see if new things are in there, but it's rare.
> Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > your ideas.
It would be great to have a discussion of the ideas and not just leave it with a one-time posting asking for feedback. I know you're constantly reading the groups for feedback, but the user here doesn't - can't see it. JLH mentioned the other threads. I have to agree with him: to the average user, it appears as if the feedback is ignored. No comments to follow up from Google. No visible changes in any of the systems. I know it takes long and I am certain that a lot of discussion goes on behind the scenes about these things and I know that a lot of the feedback you get just can't be implemented even if you wanted to do so (like my comment on the two articles above). However, it would be great if the webmasters who go out of their ways to provide feedback actually see that things are being done, wheels are set in motion and hey, if you can't implement any of the feedback we give: let us know. We don't bite. But we don't like to feel that we're ignored.
Hope it helps! Hope to hear back from you all ;-) John
How many times a day do the same 5 or 6 questions get asked? I'd like to see a GIANT red font link that reads "Commonly Asked Questions"
I'd also like a detailed section called "Common Myths" with a link that is displayed prominently - self explanatory
Having more Googlers participate would also be a very big plus. Since the announcement was made that more would be joining, I can't say that I've seen much evidence that they actually have. Even if they feel the question has been answered, having a Googler post a more detailed reply or just an acknowledgment that the response is correct would let people know that Google is listening.
> We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to > improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make > sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to > date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're > looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in > detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual > info?
> If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you > haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
> - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? > - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > been more useful to you? What's missing? > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? > - What do you like best? > - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > search?
> Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > your ideas.
> Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.
First of all, following your guidelines (and explaining them to Webmasters and Web developers) since the very first version I've to admit that you've improved them steadily to become a useful resource for specialists who are able to gather the missing tidbits you Googlers spread on the Web too. I'm glad that you're willing to evolve them to become a useful resource for spare time Webmasters, site owners, publishers, bloggers and other non-search-geeks. I appreciate your call for input very much, and I hope that you involve us during the various redesign stages.
Providing Webmaster support since 2001 or so I could write a book in response to your post. Fortunately some very bright folks have raised the most important issues already. Hence I pick a single item to explain my take on the causes why your current help system is not helpful for non-geeks:
While we can't manually change your URL in our search results, there are steps you can take to make sure your transition is smooth.
First, you can redirect individuals to your new site. If your old URLs redirect to your new site using HTTP 301 (permanent) redirects, our crawler will discover the new URLs. For more information about 301 HTTP redirects, please see http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt
Google listings are based in part on our ability to find you from links on other sites. To preserve your rank, you'll want to tell others who link to you of your change of address. One way to find a sampling of sites that link to yours is to perform a link search. To learn how, please visit http://www.google.com/help/features.html#link. To obtain a comprehensive list of the links that point to your page, perform a Google search on your URL. On the results page, select the "Find web pages that contain the term" link, and Google will provide you with webpages that mention your address. </blockquote>
This topic covers information one needs for many purposes: - Consolidating domains - Changing/moving domains - Fixing canonicalization issues - Replacing Web pages - Changing underlying technologies - Consolidating Web pages - Handling removed URLs - Avoiding duplicated contents - Handling landing page URLs with affiliate IDs - UA cloaking to enhance crawlability when the supp index got flooded with URLs containing sessionIDs or other tracking parameters, redundant arguments and other obsolete noise - ...
Its prominent points of entry are "301 redirect" and "URL changed", thus a Webmaster searching for advice on one of the topics above will never reach it. That's not only a question of linking this topic from related articles. To trigger the *right* searches you must add a "usages" section containing related keywords in the anchor text of links pointing to items explaining the usage of permanent redirects for each and every use case you can think of. Also predefined tags as well as user tagging of topics would be pretty helpful.
That said, you need to add articles/FAQ items/tutorials/... for each (sensible) possible question closely or at least somewhat related to 301 redirects.
Findability is not everything, the information provided must be useful and comprehensive too. The text quoted above is neither useful nor helpful. In fact it's completely useless, misleading, and confusing:
"First, you can redirect individuals to your new site. If your old URLs redirect to your new site using HTTP 301 (permanent) redirects, our crawler will discover the new URLs."
You know the process, so why not describe it? Tell that you remove the redirecting page in the search index before you index the destination if it's not yet known, tell that the link love from inbound links pointing to the outdated URL will be transferred to the new URL, and give an idea of the throughput depending on PageRank and other factors, tell that the PageRank transfer cannot be tracked by looking at toolbar PR, tell why moving large sites in chunks makes sense and why ...
Do you really think that the average publisher can be bothered with reading a RFC *and* that this non-geek can get something useful out of it? Not really. You don't write for engineers, you're addressing for example small business owners and their auxiliary persons who may be programmers or secretaries. Here's a sample of a FAQ entry covering redirects, which is also way too technical but explains things better: http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=110#301
"Google listings are based in part on our ability to find you from links on other sites. To preserve your rank, you'll want to tell others who link to you of your change of address. One way to find a sampling of sites that link to yours is to perform a link search. To learn how, please visit http://www.google.com/help/features.html#link. "
That's plain misleading and confusing. How can you point users to a functionality which does not delivers what it's expected to deliver *by design*? Don't expect any understanding of the "sampling" bit. You know that link: searches are designed to show nothing or a randomly selected set of useless and outdated samples because you were short on disc space and later on you didn't want to reveal too much information to SEOs. Remember that exactly this search operator is responsible for all the link spam you're fighting now because a few years ago you've decided to show only PR4+ links in reverse citation results. Don't promote it, bury it or revamp it, and especially do not point to it when you know that it's completely useless for its purpose.
Better state something in the lines of "When you redirect a page which is linked from other pages not under your control you should contact the Webmasters asking them to change the URL. Don't forget to change the URL in your internal links too". Then just point to the Webmaster tools but don't forget to tell that links from pages in the supplemental index don't make it on the list of inbound links, and why, and in which frequence these lists get updated, and why they're sorted by commonness and not importance...
"To obtain a comprehensive list of the links that point to your page, perform a Google search on your URL. On the results page, select the "Find web pages that contain the term" link, and Google will provide you with webpages that mention your address."
You know that this doesn't work as expected. The result is incomplete, because it covers only links with the URL in page/anchor/noframe text, not the source code.
"You may also be interested in... * How do I add my site to Google's search results? * Why doesn't Google index all of the pages of my site? * Why doesn't my site show up for a specific keyword?"
These hints are useless, unrelated, and out of context.
That's a pretty good example of "the worst FAQ entry ever".
Realize that you've created a pretty complex service and that the average user will not understand how large scalable systems work. Bear in mind that most folks believe that Ms. Googlebot does the indexing and that she is responsible for penalties, filtering and ordering results and whatever. It's not necessary to tell that crawling, indexing and handling search queries are independent processes, or to explain your architecture in detail. It's important that you provide good and understandable answers to common questions in a way that the non-geek can follow you, getting detailed step by step advice on the tasks s/he has to do, written in a form that fits the questioners intellect and knowledge. With every sentence you write keep ind mind that abstraction is an academic skill and the questioner may lack it.
> We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to > improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make > sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to > date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're > looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in > detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual > info?
> If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you > haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
> - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? > - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > been more useful to you? What's missing? > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? > - What do you like best? > - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > search?
> Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > your ideas.
> Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.
Before you try to fix the help areas, how about fixing the Webmaster Tools themselves?
I love the concept of the "Links" area. Problem is, it is never updated. I've almost stopped using it because there are "External" links listed that I know are totally dead. One I am sure of because it was my son's site and he took that down the middle of last year, but it still shows as an external link in the tools. I put my URL in my signature on a message forum site. I removed it last year, but over half of the 177 External links that show in my Webmaster Tools are for that forum site even though there is no URL to my site there anymore.
Under the " Page analysis", the "Phrases" that offer variation is useless. I can capitalize search term on my own, thanks.
The " Crawl stats" that show my rank as "High, Medium, Low, PageRank not yet assigned" would be a lot better if it just gave the actual page rank. As is, I seldom pay attention to it.
The point is, Google can "restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center" all it wants, but if the tools are not used or useful, who is going to care about or use the restructured Webmaster Tools Help Center?
> We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to > improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make > sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to > date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're > looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in > detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual > info?
> If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you > haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
> - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? > - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > been more useful to you? What's missing? > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? > - What do you like best? > - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > search?
> Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > your ideas.
> Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.
Frank Makes an excellent point. There has been a lot of hype regarding the webmaster tools, which in fact are out dated, behind the real index significantly, and generally unavailable unless you own cnn.com. It's the small sites that are seeking information, but most receive "Data is unavailable at this time" which is really a non- answer, which rings a bell...anyone read this excelled blog post about useless messages from her blackberry?
Where the author says, "If I click the details, I get something a little more helpful than "unable to process it for some reason", which is so unhelpful, I say, why even include it. Just say the server couldn't process the request. The "for some reason" is just mocking me. "
Using her words, telling me "Data is not available at this time" is just mocking me, teasing me that my site is so insignificant Google can't find the time to push the data they have about me to the user interface. Buy another computer all ready, one dedicated to updating the tools information.
Making the tools more accurate, user friendly, and just basically useful should be a higher priority than working on the help center which covers the tools which are in disorder as they are.
> Before you try to fix the help areas, how about fixing the Webmaster > Tools themselves?
> I love the concept of the "Links" area. Problem is, it is never > updated. I've almost stopped using it because there are "External" > links listed that I know are totally dead. One I am sure of because it > was my son's site and he took that down the middle of last year, but > it still shows as an external link in the tools. I put my URL in my > signature on a message forum site. I removed it last year, but over > half of the 177 External links that show in my Webmaster Tools are for > that forum site even though there is no URL to my site there anymore.
> Under the " Page analysis", the "Phrases" that offer variation is > useless. I can capitalize search term on my own, thanks.
> The " Crawl stats" that show my rank as "High, Medium, Low, PageRank > not yet assigned" would be a lot better if it just gave the actual > page rank. As is, I seldom pay attention to it.
> The point is, Google can "restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center" > all it wants, but if the tools are not used or useful, who is going to > care about or use the restructured Webmaster Tools Help Center?
> Regards, > Frank
> On May 30, 11:17 pm, Riona MacNamara wrote:
> > Hello webmasters!
> > We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to > > improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make > > sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to > > date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're > > looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in > > detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual > > info?
> > If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you > > haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
> > - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? > > - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > > been more useful to you? What's missing? > > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? > > - What do you like best? > > - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > > search?
> > Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > > your ideas.
> > Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.
A new suggestion, when one enters a new subject in the webmaster help forum here, it would be useful if along with listing possible other threads that may be relevant, list help topics that may be relevant as well.
The number of times I have seen that one could simply enter the title of someone's new thread into the help search and come up with the answer is somewhat maddening but people may not even realize the help section is there.
I know that might be difficult to do, integrating the help with new topic creation but were it possible, I have to believe it would help significantly.
> Frank Makes an excellent point. There has been a lot of hype > regarding the webmaster tools, which in fact are out dated, behind the > real index significantly, and generally unavailable unless you own > cnn.com. It's the small sites that are seeking information, but most > receive "Data is unavailable at this time" which is really a non- > answer, which rings a bell...anyone read this excelled blog post about > useless messages from her blackberry?
> Where the author says, "If I click the details, I get something a > little more helpful than "unable to process it for some reason", which > is so unhelpful, I say, why even include it. Just say the server > couldn't process the request. The "for some reason" is just mocking > me. "
> Using her words, telling me "Data is not available at this time" is > just mocking me, teasing me that my site is so insignificant Google > can't find the time to push the data they have about me to the user > interface. Buy another computer all ready, one dedicated to updating > the tools information.
> Making the tools more accurate, user friendly, and just basically > useful should be a higher priority than working on the help center > which covers the tools which are in disorder as they are.
> On Jun 1, 12:08 am, Preacher wrote:
> > Hello Riona,
> > Before you try to fix the help areas, how about fixing the Webmaster > > Tools themselves?
> > I love the concept of the "Links" area. Problem is, it is never > > updated. I've almost stopped using it because there are "External" > > links listed that I know are totally dead. One I am sure of because it > > was my son's site and he took that down the middle of last year, but > > it still shows as an external link in the tools. I put my URL in my > > signature on a message forum site. I removed it last year, but over > > half of the 177 External links that show in my Webmaster Tools are for > > that forum site even though there is no URL to my site there anymore.
> > Under the " Page analysis", the "Phrases" that offer variation is > > useless. I can capitalize search term on my own, thanks.
> > The " Crawl stats" that show my rank as "High, Medium, Low, PageRank > > not yet assigned" would be a lot better if it just gave the actual > > page rank. As is, I seldom pay attention to it.
> > The point is, Google can "restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center" > > all it wants, but if the tools are not used or useful, who is going to > > care about or use the restructured Webmaster Tools Help Center?
> > Regards, > > Frank
> > On May 30, 11:17 pm, Riona MacNamara wrote:
> > > Hello webmasters!
> > > We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to > > > improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make > > > sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to > > > date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're > > > looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in > > > detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual > > > info?
> > > If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you > > > haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
> > > - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > > > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? > > > - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > > > been more useful to you? What's missing? > > > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? > > > - What do you like best? > > > - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > > > search?
> > > Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > > > your ideas.
> > > Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.
Riona MacNamara wrote: > - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful?
No.
No.
The info is not context sensitive or relevant to my immediate needs.
> Before you try to fix the help areas, how about fixing the Webmaster > Tools themselves?
> I love the concept of the "Links" area. Problem is, it is never > updated. I've almost stopped using it because there are "External" > links listed that I know are totally dead. One I am sure of because it > was my son's site and he took that down the middle of last year, but > it still shows as an external link in the tools. I put my URL in my > signature on a message forum site. I removed it last year, but over > half of the 177 External links that show in my Webmaster Tools are for > that forum site even though there is no URL to my site there anymore.
> Under the " Page analysis", the "Phrases" that offer variation is > useless. I can capitalize search term on my own, thanks.
> The " Crawl stats" that show my rank as "High, Medium, Low, PageRank > not yet assigned" would be a lot better if it just gave the actual > page rank. As is, I seldom pay attention to it.
> The point is, Google can "restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center" > all it wants, but if the tools are not used or useful, who is going to > care about or use the restructured Webmaster Tools Help Center?
> Regards, > Frank
> On May 30, 11:17 pm, Riona MacNamara wrote:
> > Hello webmasters!
> > We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to > > improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make > > sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to > > date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're > > looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in > > detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual > > info?
> > If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you > > haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
> > - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? > > - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > > been more useful to you? What's missing? > > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? > > - What do you like best? > > - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > > search?
> > Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > > your ideas.
> > Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.
> We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to > improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make > sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to > date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're > looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in > detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual > info?
> If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you > haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
> - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? > - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > been more useful to you? What's missing? > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? > - What do you like best? > - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > search?
> Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > your ideas.
> Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.
> I'd like to see more information about multilanguage sites & > googlebot.
YES YES YES YES YES!
As more and more people are now trying to provide content in multiple languages, which is GREAT, helping people understand how to get their respective language versions to show up in localized results becomes more and more important.
That's not necessarily directly inline with your question but is an area the current help topics don't seem to cover.
> We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to > improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make > sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to > date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're > looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in > detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual > info?
> If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you > haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
> - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? > - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > been more useful to you? What's missing? > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? > - What do you like best? > - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > search?
> Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > your ideas.
> Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.
> > We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to > > improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make > > sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to > > date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're > > looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in > > detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual > > info?
> > If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you > > haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
> > - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? > > - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > > been more useful to you? What's missing? > > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? > > - What do you like best? > > - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > > search?
> > Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > > your ideas.
> > Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.
- Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful?
I read it all the time and wish I could help more.
The information is easy to find But.. There is pleanty of accurate information available but you have to know who to listen too. It would be very useful to all of us if ( subject to their actually wanting to do this ) if some of the regular posters were given and Emblem marking their name as "this is info you can trust". I have gotten to the point where there are only a hand full of people whose advice I actually trust.
- If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have been more useful to you? What's missing?
An FAQ is missing.
- What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center?
Lack of official answers from Google. It's why I came here in the first place.
- What do you like best?
Nothing really stands out.
- When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you search?
Both.
Please add a precise ( official ) definition and examples of the "good" the "bad" and the "ugly" entries in the Supplemental Index. It's the subject nearest my heart at the moment.
> We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to > improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make > sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to > date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're > looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in > detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual > info?
> If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you > haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
> - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? > - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > been more useful to you? What's missing? > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? > - What do you like best? > - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > search?
> Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > your ideas.
> Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.
> A new suggestion, when one enters a new subject in the webmaster help > forum here, it would be useful if along with listing possible other > threads that may be relevant, list help topics that may be relevant as > well.
> The number of times I have seen that one could simply enter the title > of someone's new thread into the help search and come up with the > answer is somewhat maddening but people may not even realize the help > section is there.
> I know that might be difficult to do, integrating the help with new > topic creation but were it possible, I have to believe it would help > significantly.
> Craig
> On May 31, 11:21 pm, JLH wrote:
> > Frank Makes an excellent point. There has been a lot of hype > > regarding the webmaster tools, which in fact are out dated, behind the > > real index significantly, and generally unavailable unless you own > > cnn.com. It's the small sites that are seeking information, but most > > receive "Data is unavailable at this time" which is really a non- > > answer, which rings a bell...anyone read this excelled blog post about > > useless messages from her blackberry?
> > Where the author says, "If I click the details, I get something a > > little more helpful than "unable to process it for some reason", which > > is so unhelpful, I say, why even include it. Just say the server > > couldn't process the request. The "for some reason" is just mocking > > me. "
> > Using her words, telling me "Data is not available at this time" is > > just mocking me, teasing me that my site is so insignificant Google > > can't find the time to push the data they have about me to the user > > interface. Buy another computer all ready, one dedicated to updating > > the tools information.
> > Making the tools more accurate, user friendly, and just basically > > useful should be a higher priority than working on the help center > > which covers the tools which are in disorder as they are.
> > On Jun 1, 12:08 am, Preacher wrote:
> > > Hello Riona,
> > > Before you try to fix the help areas, how about fixing the Webmaster > > > Tools themselves?
> > > I love the concept of the "Links" area. Problem is, it is never > > > updated. I've almost stopped using it because there are "External" > > > links listed that I know are totally dead. One I am sure of because it > > > was my son's site and he took that down the middle of last year, but > > > it still shows as an external link in the tools. I put my URL in my > > > signature on a message forum site. I removed it last year, but over > > > half of the 177 External links that show in my Webmaster Tools are for > > > that forum site even though there is no URL to my site there anymore.
> > > Under the " Page analysis", the "Phrases" that offer variation is > > > useless. I can capitalize search term on my own, thanks.
> > > The " Crawl stats" that show my rank as "High, Medium, Low, PageRank > > > not yet assigned" would be a lot better if it just gave the actual > > > page rank. As is, I seldom pay attention to it.
> > > The point is, Google can "restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center" > > > all it wants, but if the tools are not used or useful, who is going to > > > care about or use the restructured Webmaster Tools Help Center?
> > > Regards, > > > Frank
> > > On May 30, 11:17 pm, Riona MacNamara wrote:
> > > > Hello webmasters!
> > > > We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to > > > > improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make > > > > sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to > > > > date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're > > > > looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in > > > > detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual > > > > info?
> > > > If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you > > > > haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
> > > > - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > > > > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? > > > > - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > > > > been more useful to you? What's missing? > > > > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? > > > > - What do you like best? > > > > - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > > > > search?
> > > > Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > > > > your ideas.
> > > > Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.- Hide quoted text -
> I'd also love to see a list of subjects that Google WILL NOT EVER > answer, so that people could be pointed there. > Something like, we will not comment on: > 5) what a -30, -950, MSSA penalty is.
Well, there should be some explanation as to why 1 day you rank #5 for a search term and the next day #950 for the same term without making any changes to the website in a week. This is still a mystery to me. How can this be possible? Can someone explain? Please!
> > I'd also love to see a list of subjects that Google WILL NOT EVER > > answer, so that people could be pointed there. > > Something like, we will not comment on: > > 5) what a -30, -950, MSSA penalty is.
> Well, there should be some explanation as to why 1 day you rank #5 for > a search term and the next day #950 for the same term without making > any changes to the website in a week. > This is still a mystery to me. How can this be possible? > Can someone explain? Please!
c'mon G just update the data in webmasters tools - mine is so out of date its written in latin ! i'm not even sure if the query stats relate to to pre or post second world war - as for the last time the links tab was updated Lincoln was still running for president.
As an independent webmaster -- just me and my computer -- Webmaster Tools Help is invaluable. It is a friendly and educational support network for me. In general the information is easy to find, more important, once I get over the inevitable learning curve even more information appears. If Google keeps giving out the knowledge I'll keep climbing the mountain.See you at the top:)
> We're planning to restructure the Webmaster Tools Help Center to > improve the way we organize and present help content. We want to make > sure that our content is technically accurate, relevant, and up to > date, and that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're > looking for. Is the content broad enough in scope? Deep enough in > detail? Does it have the right mix of instructional and conceptual > info?
> If you've used the Help Center - and, just as importantly, if you > haven't - your feedback is invaluable to us. For example:
> - Do you use the Help Center? Is it easy to find information, and is > the information accurate? Is the Help Center -- well, helpful? > - If you don't use it, why not? What other sources of information have > been more useful to you? What's missing? > - What's your biggest complaint about the Help Center? > - What do you like best? > - When you go to the Help Center, do you browse the topics? Or do you > search?
> Post right here. We'll check in regularly, and we really appreciate > your ideas.
> Thank you for helping Google improve our Help Center.
> I love the concept of the "Links" area. Problem is, it is never > updated. I've almost stopped using it because there are "External" > links listed that I know are totally dead. One I am sure of because it > was my son's site and he took that down the middle of last year, but > it still shows as an external link in the tools. I put my URL in my > signature on a message forum site. I removed it last year, but over > half of the 177 External links that show in my Webmaster Tools are for > that forum site even though there is no URL to my site there anymore.
I like Frank's thoughts about improving links. We constantly read that the only way to improve the rankings is to increase the links to your site. Having spent a lot of time doing that these links then never appear on the links page. How about a way that we can either add/ remove links or suggest pages that google can search for links, rather than being stuck with links that are years out of date.
> > I love the concept of the "Links" area. Problem is, it is never > > updated. I've almost stopped using it because there are "External" > > links listed that I know are totally dead. One I am sure of because it > > was my son's site and he took that down the middle of last year, but > > it still shows as an external link in the tools. I put my URL in my > > signature on a message forum site. I removed it last year, but over > > half of the 177 External links that show in my Webmaster Tools are for > > that forum site even though there is no URL to my site there anymore.
> I like Frank's thoughts about improving links. We constantly read that > the only way to improve the rankings is to increase the links to your > site. Having spent a lot of time doing that these links then never > appear on the links page. How about a way that we can either add/ > remove links or suggest pages that google can search for links, rather > than being stuck with links that are years out of date.
