Posted by Narayanan Shivakumar (Google Distinguished Entrepreneur, Director)

Today is Google Developer Day! We're hosting events for developers in ten cities around the world, as you can read about from Matt Cutts and on our Google Blog. Jonathan Simon and Maile Ohye, whom you have seen on this blog, at conferences, and in our discussion forum, are currently hanging out at the event in San Jose.

I've been at the Beijing event, where I gave a keynote about "Plumbing the Web -- APIs and Infrastructures" for 600 Chinese web developers. I talked about a couple of my favorite topics, Sitemaps and Webmaster Tools, and some of the motivations behind them. Then I talked a bit about consumer APIs and some of our backend infrastructures to support our platform.

Check out the video of my keynote on YouTube or see some of the other videos from the events around the globe.

Posted by Adam Lasnik, Search Evangelist

I've always loved traveling. Okay, not the flights so much, especially given that I typically travel coach (yes, even for work trips). But getting to learn interesting cultural tidbits, enjoy regional cuisines, and meet new people... it all definitely makes my life richer. Even the little things -- linguistic differences ("How are you going?" in Sydney) and just walking around (pass on the left in the UK!) -- can be fascinating.

So I shouldn't be surprised when my friends tease me about my traveling as a representative of Google's Search Quality team: "Must be really rough!" However, being an active part of conferences actually isn't all glamour and relaxation.

Here's a glimpse of the reality:

• Sometimes (though thankfully rarely) I get metaphorically used as a human punching bag.
• There's no pause button on my corp and personal e-mail accounts. Days at conferences = LOTS of email to catch up on!
• And on a related note, what's with the no-wifi nonsense?! I have Verizon broadband [sic] for my laptop now, but still... ack!
  
• Attending conferences requires an enormous amount of extra time overall. I stubbornly seem to create presentations fresh for each conference, I collaborate with other Googler speakers on their presentations (and vice versa), and I end up with a ton of additional (valuable but time-intense) work from info I glean at the conferences. Based on this and the e-mail reason noted above, I've noticed that each day of conference = five days of combined prep + analysis + implementation.

But here's why I still really like going to conferences:

• I learn a bunch from other speakers. When folks from other search engines or various experts speak, I often think -- hey, that's useful information, or that's a particularly thoughtful way of explaining stuff. I'm still pretty new to the conference-speaking circuit, so every bit I soak up helps!
  
• SEO and webmaster folks are typically rather fun people. :-)
  
• Though I don't always make time for this, it's certainly neat getting to spend some time exploring various cities. Okay, so San Jose doesn't count (it's right next to Google), but I can't wait to check out Toronto (and, likely via a few personal days beforehand, Montreal).
• I learn a great deal from webmasters I chat with. I'm able to go back to my colleagues here and say - hey, this is how our algorithm changes or our guidelines are being perceived, these are challenges we didn't anticipate from our tools, and so on. And it's not just about search; I've gotten thoughtful earfuls about Gmail, Calendar, and practically everything else about Google, and I do my best to relay this feedback to my colleagues in other departments.
• Lastly, seeing someone in person provides a very helpful new perspective on what they're meaning to communicate online. It's easy to misread text on a page, especially when there's no immediate opportunity to follow up with questions. But in person, issues get cleared up on both sides, and that's good for everyone.

Thankfully, it's not just me who's presenting to and chatting with webmasters from Google -- I'd be exhausted, and you'd get quite bored of me. As you can see from the list below, our conference-going is genuinely a team effort: Through this month and June, you'll find Google Search Quality and Webmaster Central folks present at these conferences:

Search Engine Strategies - Xiamen, China - May 25, 26-30

• Jianfei Zhu (Senior Software Engineer): Get a Lesson from Spamming

Search Engine Strategies - Milan, Italy - May 29-30

• Brian White (Technical Program Manager)
  
• Luisella Mazza (Search Quality Analyst)
• Stefano Bezze (Search Quality Associate)
  

American Marketing Association Hot Topics Series - New York, NY - May 25

• Maile Ohye (Senior Developer Support Engineer): Search Engine Marketing
  

Google Developer Day - San Jose, CA (was originally set for Mountain View) - May 31

• Jonathan Simon (Webmaster Trends Analyst)
  
• Maile Ohye (Senior Developer Support Engineer)
  

Search Marketing Expo Advanced - Seattle, WA - June 4-5

• Matt Cutts (Software Engineer): You&A, Personalized Search and Penalty Box
  
• Vanessa Fox (Product Manager, Webmaster Central): Duplicate Content

Search Engine Strategies - Toronto, Canada - June 12-13

• Adam Lasnik: Search Engine Friendly Design and The Worst SEO Myths, Don'ts, and Scams

Searchnomics - Santa Clara, CA - June 27

• Shashi Thakur (Software Engineer): Search Engine Friendly Design
• Greg Grothaus (Software Engineer): Search & Dynamic Web Sites and SEO for Web 2.0
  

* * *

We look forward to seeing many of you in person! But even if you can't or don't want to go to one of the conferences we attend, we welcome your questions, comments, or even just a friendly introduction in our Webmaster Help Group.

Take care, and enjoy your summer, wherever your online or offline travels may take you!

Posted by Vanessa Fox

Yesterday, at Searchology, we unveiled exciting changes in our search results. With universal search, we've begun blending results from more than just the web in order to provide the most relevant and useful results possible. In addition to web pages, for instance, the search results may include video, news, images, maps, and books. Over time, we'll continue to enhance this blending so that searchers can get the exact information they need right from the search results.

This is great news for the searcher, but what does it mean for you, the webmaster? It's great news for you as well. Many people do their searches from web search and aren't aware of our many other tools to search for images, news, videos, maps, and books. Since more of those results may now be returned in web search, if you have content that is returned in these others searches, more potential visitors may see your results.

Want to make sure you're taking full advantage of universal search? Here are some tips:

Google News results
If your site includes news content, you can, submit your site for inclusion in Google News. Once your site is included, you can let us know about your latest articles by submitting a News Sitemap. (Note News Sitemaps are currently available for English sites only.)

News Archive results
If you have historical news content (available for free or by subscription), you can submit it for inclusion in News Archive Search.

Image results
If your site includes images, you can opt-in to enhanced Image search in webmaster tools, which will enable us to gather additional metadata about your images using our Image Labeler. This helps us return your images for the most relevant queries. Also ensure that you are fully taking advantage of the images on your site.

Local results
If your site is for a business in a particular geographic location, you can provide information to us using our Local Business Center. By providing this information, you can help us provide the best, locally relevant results to searchers both in web search and on Google Maps.

Video results
If you have video content, you can host it on Google Video, YouTube, or a number of other video hosting providers. If the video is a relevant result for the query, searchers can play the video directly from the search results page (for Google Video and YouTube) or can view a thumbnail of the video then click over to the player for other hosting providers. You can easily upload videos to Google Video or to YouTube.

Our goal with universal search is to provide most relevant and useful results, so for those of you who want to connect to visitors via search, our best advice remains the same: create valuable, unique content that is exactly what searchers are looking for.

Posted by Aaron D'Souza, Software Engineer, Search Quality

Earlier this year, a bunch of Googlers (Maile, Peeyush, Dan, Adam and I) bunged ourselves across the equator and headed to Sydney, so we could show our users and webmasters that just because you're "down under" doesn't mean you're under our radar. We had a great time getting to know folks at our Sydney office, and an even greater time meeting and chatting with all the people attending Search Summit and Search Engine Room. What makes those 12-hour flights worthwhile is getting the chance to inform and be informed about the issues important to the webmaster community.

One of the questions we heard quite frequently: Should we as webmasters/SEOs/SEMs/users be worried about personalized search?

Our answer: a resounding NO! Personalized search takes each user's search behavior, and subtly tunes the search results to better match their interests over time. For a user, this means that even if you're a lone entomologist in a sea of sports fans, you'll always get the results most relevant to you for the query "cricket". For the webmaster, it allows niche markets that collide on the same search terms to disambiguate themselves based on individual user preferences, and this really presents a tremendous opportunity for visibility. Also, to put things in perspective, search engines have been moving towards some degree of personalization for years; for example, providing country/language specific results is already a form of personalization, just at a coarser granularity. Making it more fine-grained is the logical next step, and helps level the playing field for smaller niche websites which now have a chance to rank well for users that want their content the most.

Another question that popped up a lot: I'm moving my site from domain X to Y. How do I make sure all my hard-earned reputation carries over?

Here are the important bits to think about:

• For each page on domain X, have it 301-redirect to the corresponding page on Y. (How? Typically through .htaccess, but check with your hosting provider).
• You might want to stagger the move, and redirect sub-sections of your site over time. This gives you the chance to keep an eye on the effects, and also gives search engines' crawl/indexing pipelines time to cover the space of redirected URLs.
• http://www.google.com/webmasters is your friend. Keep an eye on it during the transition to make sure that the redirects are having the effect you want.
• Give it time. How quickly the transition is reflected in the results depends on how quickly we recrawl your site and see those redirects, which depends on a lot of factors including the current reputation of your site's pages.
• Don't forget to update your Sitemap. (You are using Sitemaps, aren't you?)
• If possible, don't substantially change the content of your pages at the same time you make the move. Otherwise, it will be difficult to tell if ranking changes are due to the change of content or incorrectly implemented redirects.

Before we sign off, we wanted to shout-out to a couple of the folks at the Sydney office: Lars (one of the original Google Maps guys) gets accolades from all of us jetlagged migrants for donating his awesome Italian espresso machine to the office. And Deepak, thanks for all your tips on what to see and do around Sydney.

Webmaster tools from Google are indispensable for people who optimize their site for indexing in Google. Eighteen months ago, Google launched another free tool for webmasters - Google Analytics - which tells you about your visitors and the traffic patterns to your site using a JavaScript code snippet to execute tracking and reporting. This past Tuesday, Google Analytics launched a new version, with an easier-to-use interface that has more intuitive navigation and greater visibility for important metrics. We also introduced some collaboration and customization features such as email reports and custom dashboards.

But we wanted to highlight some of the webmaster-specific metrics within Google Analytics for our regular readers, since it offers a lot of easily-accessible information that will enrich the work you're doing.

For instance, do you know how many visitors to your site are using IE versus Firefox? And even further, how many of those IE or Firefox users are converting on a goal you have set up? Google Analytics can tell you information like this so you can prepare and tailor your website for your audience. Then, when you are designing, you can prioritize your testing to make sure that the site works on the most popular browsers and operating systems first.



Are your visitors using Java-enabled browsers? What version of Flash are the majority of your visitors using? What connection speed do they have? If you find that lots of visitors are using a dial-up service, you're going to want to put in some more effort to streamline the load time of images on your site, for example.

Plus, Google Analytics will make your company's marketing division very happy. It reports on the most effective search keywords, the most popular referring sources and the geographic location of visitors, as well as the performance of banner ads, PPC keyword campaigns, and email newsletters. If you haven't tried Google Analytics, watch the Flash tour of the product or set up a free account now and see statistics on your visitors and the traffic to your site within three hours.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

(This post was translated from our German webmaster blog, originally written by Stefanie.)

We are aware that a number of German webmasters have received fake penalty notification emails that allegedly came from Google Search Quality. These spam emails have created some confusion about their authenticity, since we send very similar email notifications, which you can read more about here. Therefore, we clearly want to state that these emails are not related to any of Google's efforts concerning webmaster notification.

Updated: Because these emails are easy to mistake for authentic ones from Google, we've temporarily discontinued sending them as we work on ways to provide more secure communication mechanisms. We hope this will reduce confusion.

In the original post, we had listed the ways to tell if the email you received was not from Google. However, as we've temporarily stopped sending emails about guidelines violations, you can safely assume that any email you receive isn't from us. Note that the emails we sent did not include attachments. In addition, some of the emails mentioned 301 redirects as being the violation in question. Rest assured that 301 redirects are not a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. Note that we do provide information about some violations in webmaster tools. If your site previously violated the guidelines and you've made changes to fix it, you can let us know by filing a reinclusion request.

This post has been updated to indicate that we've temporarily stopped sending emails to webmasters about guidelines violations to reduce confusion.

Após o registo de um domínio e criação de um site, a maioria dos webmasters quer ver o seu site indexado e aparecer nas primeiras posições no Google. Desde que iniciámos o suporte a webmasters de língua Portuguesa em 2006, vimos grande especulação acerca da forma como o Google indexa e avalia os sites. O mercado de língua Portuguesa, ainda numa fase de desenvolvimento em relação a SEO, é um dos maiores geradores de conteúdo na internet, por isso decidimos clarificar algumas das questões mais pertinentes.

Notámos como prática comum entre webmasters de língua Portuguesa a tendência para entrar em esquemas massivos de troca de links e a implementação de páginas única e exclusivamente para este fim, sem terem em consideração a qualidade dos links, a origem ou o impacto que estes terão nos seus sites a longo termo; outros temas populares englobam também uma preocupação excessiva com o PageRank ou a regularidade com que o Google acede aos seus sites.
Geralmente, o nosso conselho para quem pretende criar um site é começar por considerar aquilo que têm para oferecer antes de criar qualquer site ou blog. A receita para um site de sucesso é conteúdo original, onde os utilizadores possam encontrar informação de qualidade e actualizada correspondendo às suas necessidades.

Para clarificar alguns destes temas, compilámos algumas dicas para webmasters de língua Portuguesa:

• Ser considerado autoridade no assunto. Ser experiente num tema guiará de forma natural ao seu site utilizadores que procuram informação especificamente relacionada com o assunto do site. Não se preocupe demasiado com back-links ou PageRank, ambos irão surgir de forma natural acompanhando a importância e relevância do seu site. Se os utilizadores considerarem a sua informação útil e de qualidade, eles voltarão a visitar, recomendarão o seu site a outros utilizadores e criarão links para o mesmo. Isto tem também influência na relevância do seu site para o Google – se é relevante para os utilizadores, certamente será relevante para o Google na mesma proporção.
• Submeta o seu conteúdo no Google e mantenha-o actualizado frequentemente. Este é outro ponto chave que influencia a frequência com que o seu site é acedido pelo Google. Se o seu conteúdo não é actualizado ou se o seu site não é relevante, o mais certo é o Google não aceder ao seu site com a mesma frequência que você deseja. Se acha que o Google não acede ao seu site de uma forma constante, talvez isto seja uma dica para que actualize o site mais frequentemente. Além disso na Central do Webmaster o Google disponibiliza as Ferramentas para Webmasters, ferramentas úteis que o ajudarão na indexação.
• Evite puras afiliações. Na América Latina há uma quantidade massiva de sites criados apenas para pura afiliação, tais como as lojas afiliadas do mercadolivre. Não há problema em ser afiliado desde que crie conteúdo original e de qualidade para os utilizadores, um bom exemplo é a inclusão de avaliação e críticas de produtos de forma a ajudar o utilizador na decisão da compra.
• Não entre em esquemas de troca de links. Os esquemas de troca de links ou negócios que prometem aumentar a visibilidade do seu site com o mínimo de esforço, podem levar a um processo de correcção por parte do Google. As nossas Directrizes de Ajuda do Webmaster mencionam claramente esta prática na secção "Directrizes de Qualidade – princípios básicos". Evite entrar neste tipo de esquemas e não crie páginas apenas para troca de links. Tenha em mente que não é o número de links que apontam para o seu site que conta, mas a qualidade e relevância desses links.
• Use o AdSense de forma correcta. Monetizar conteúdo original e de qualidade levará a uma melhor experiência com o AdSense comparado com directórios sem qualquer tipo de qualidade ou conteúdo original. Sites sem qualquer tipo de valor levam os utilizadores a abandoná-los antes mesmo de estes clicarem em qualquer anúncio.
  Lembre-se que o processo de indexação e de acesso ao seu site pelo Google engloba muitas variáveis e em muitos casos o seu site não aparecerá no índice tão depressa quanto esperava. Se não está seguro acerca de um problema particular, considere visitar as Directrizes de Ajuda do Webmaster ou peça ajuda na sua comunidade. Na maioria dos casos encontrará a resposta que procura de outros utilizadores mais experientes. Um dos sítios recomendados para começar é o Grupo de Discussão de Ajuda a Webmasters que monitorizamos regularmente.

Getting your site indexed

After registering a domain and creating a website, the next thing almost everybody wants is to get it indexed in Google and rank high. Since we started supporting webmasters in the Portuguese language market in 2006, we saw a growing speculation about how Google indexes and ranks websites. The Portuguese language market is one of the biggest web content generators and it's still in development regarding SEO, so we decided to shed some light into the main debated questions.

We have noticed that it is very popular among Portuguese webmasters to engage in massive link exchange schemes and to build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites; other popular issues involve an over-concern with PageRank and how often Google crawls their websites.

Generally, our advice is to consider what you have to offer, before you create your own website or blog. The recipe for a good and successful site is unique and original content where users find valuable and updated information corresponding to their needs.

To address some of these concerns, we have compiled some hints for Portuguese webmasters:

• Be an authority on the subject. Being experienced in the subject you are writing about will naturally drive users to your site who search for that specific subject. Don't be too concerned about back-links and PageRank, both will grow naturally as your site becomes a reference. If users find your site useful and of good quality, they will most likely link to your site, return to it and/or recommend your site to other users. This has also an influence on how relevant your site will be to Google — if it's relevant for the users, than it's likely that it is relevant to Google as well.
• Submit your content to Google and update it on a frequent basis. This is another key factor for the frequency with which your site will be crawled. If your content is not frequently updated or if your site is not relevant to the subject, most likely you will not be crawled as often as you would like to be. If you wonder why Google doesn't crawl your sites on a frequent or constant basis, then maybe this is a hint and you should look into updating your site more often. Apart from that in the Webmasters Central we offer Webmaster tools to help you get your site crawled.
• Don't engage in link exchange schemes. Be aware that link exchange programs or deals that promise to boost your site visibility with a minimum effort might entail some corrective action from Google. Our Google Webmasters Guidelines clearly address this issue under "Quality Guidelines – basic principles". Avoid engaging in these kind of schemes and don't build pages specifically for exchanging links. Bear in mind that it is not the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but the quality and relevance of those links.
• Avoid pure affiliations. In the Latin America market there is a massive number of sites created just for pure affiliation purposes such as pure mercadolivre catalogs. There is no problem in being an affiliate as long as you create some added value for your users and produce valuable content that a user can't find anywhere else like product reviews and ratings.
• Use AdSense wisely. Monetizing original and valuable content will generate you more revenue from AdSense compared to directories with no added value. Be aware that sites without added value will turn away users from your site before they will ever click on an AdSense ad.

You should bear in mind that the process of indexing and how Google crawls your site includes many variables and in many cases your site won't come up as quickly in the SERPs as you expected. If you are not sure about some particular issue, consider visiting the Google Webmasters Guidelines or seek guidance in your community. In most cases you will get good advice and positive feedback from more experienced users. One of the recommended places to start is the Google discussion group for webmasters (in English) as well as the recently launched Portuguese discussion group for webmasters which we will monitor on a regular basis.