webmasters

Google glitch gives Webmaster Tools to revoked accounts

An apparent security glitch in Google's software for webmasters has resulted in former contractors for big Web sites being granted access to those sites once again.

The glitch, as reported by The Next Web, has opened up sites like eBay to at least the potential for mischief. Once granted access to Webmaster Tools, an unscrupulous former employee could remove a site's home page from the search engine, eliminate sitemaps, and revoke other users' access to the tools.

So far, there haven't been any reports that former employees have made any mischief as a result of the glitch.… Read more

Analyze, create robots.txt files in Google

Google's Webmaster Central has become a very important resource for anyone who has a Web site, works on a Web site, or, like SEO practitioners, helps others with their Web sites.

Google continues to roll out more features and better functionality to existing features, and now they just did a little bit of both with the addition of their Generate robots.txt function.

Google had previously added a robots.txt analyzer, which at this point is still the more useful of the two tools. For those who aren't aware, the robots exclusion protocol helps with instructing search engines … Read more

MSN's Live Search Webmaster Center goes...live

MSN's Live Search team announced back on August 22 that they would be launching a set of tools for Webmasters. At that time, this was strictly a private, by invitation beta. Even then, Webmasters and SEO practitioners alike were excited and hopeful as one of the much awaited features was the ability to pull up backlink information. MSN had previously turned off the special "link" and "linkdomain" query operators that provided a count of links pointing to a page or entire site, respectively.

The Live Search team is really trying to give everyone something to be thankful for. Karen Blakeman reported in October that Microsoft had restored the link and linkdomain queries, though with the slight modification of leading them off with a "+" sign, like: +linkdomain:www.cnet.com

With apparently no official announcement from Microsoft, news of this seems to have just now picked up notice after Barry Schwartz reported it on Search Engine Land.

And now the Live Search team has… Read more

Rule the planet? Manage your site links in Google

Having your site rank high in the search engines can be a real boost to traffic for your site. Could anything be better than achieving that top spot in Google? How about getting eight more keyword-rich links up there? What I'm talking about is the highly coveted site links.

Site links have been the icing on the cake for a top listing in Google. Site links are additional links to a site that occasionally appear below the listing. What made these especially sweet was that they haven't been something that you had direct control over, but were like … Read more

Working with spiders

Web site owners and SEOs alike often feel at odds with the search engines, but times are changing. This was often the case in the past when the engines made updates and changes to their algorithms that seemed to send Web sites into a SERP tailspin, leaving everyone scrambling to regain their precious page-one positions. The engines were also a lot less forthcoming with information and guidance, perhaps taking the view that giving this information gave too much power to the spammers and phishers.

While this view was understandable on the surface, it didn't float all that well in … Read more

Sage Advice to Webmasters and SEOs from a Google Support Engineer

Recently I had the chance to sit down with Maile Ohye from Google in this podcast interview (6 MB, 25 minutes). Maile is a Senior Support Engineer on Google's Webmaster Central team. I got to know her at the AMA Hot Topic: Search Engine Marketing conference, where we were both speakers. Maile not only supports webmasters and users, but also implements changes within Google's code based on feedback from newsgroups like Google Webmaster Help, forums like Webmaster World, and blogs like Google, I Suggest.

The recently revised and expanded Google Webmaster Guidelines was a hot topic in this … Read more

Even Google.com Could Use Some SEO

In chairing the AMA's Hot Topic: Search Engine Marketing conference on Friday, I had the pleasure of hearing the presentation of Trevor Foucher, Software Engineer at Google. Not only did Trevor explain the value of Google Webmaster Central as well as some webmaster do's and don'ts, he also gave us attendees an inside glimpse of Google.com -- through statistics provided in Google Webmaster Central to verified sites, and Google.com was a verified site! So we got to see, for example, that Webmaster Central reports 19,818,383 total links to www.google.com and 1,… Read more