Google Sitemaps renamed Google Webmaster Central: new blog, new features, better communication

Vanessa Fox announced yesterday that Google Sitemaps has been renamed Google Webmaster Central. It’s not just a change of name, but rather a new platform to help webmasters maximize the crawl of their websites and also to make it easier for them to communicate with Google.

Google seems to be making serious efforts to improve communication with webmasters. Note that Vanessa Fox recently started a thread on WebMasterWorld where she invites members to ask question regarding Google crawling and indexing issues.

Our whole team is looking at better ways to communicate with webmasters, and the creating and submitting Sitemaps is just one small piece of that overall communication.

Google Webmaster Central comes with a new blog, a new Google Group, and new tools. New tools include a enhanced Crawl Report, Query Stats, Preferred Domain, an option that allows you to choose if you want to display the www. version of your site in the SERPS or the one without.
I invite you to read Rand’s Google Webmaster Central in-depth review to learn more about these new tools and see how they can be useful for your site(s).

I personnaly think some of these tools are very useful, for example the crawl report can help you spot urls that timed out when Google tried to crawl them or the “Preferred domain” option.

Andy Hagans on TrustRank

Over at Link Building Blog, Andy Hagans talks about the “index issue” he had with Google and tries to explain how he solved it. He recently launched a new site that had a “2003ish PR5 domain” he acquired hoping that the sandbox effect will not affect him. However, even if the site had more than 200 pages two weeks after he launched it, Google had only cached the homepage.

Apparently, it took only a few seconds for Andy to explain the problem :

Mama didn’t raise no fool, I don’t know why or how, but I know this domain has the proverbial “TR0”.

Translate TR0 by TrustRank 0. While the site may have had some links, Andy realized that he had no “trusted links”.

So I grabbed it every trusted link that I could (quickly) — Dir.yahoo.com, Sbd.bcentral.com, Business.com, a hosted adverpage on an older domain, and an in-content link from an old, ranking (trusted) related site that a friend owns (Thanks mate!)… Two days later, bam! 28 pages in, four days later, 160 pages in.

I think his experience reminds us that each site needs to pass the “Google Trust Test” before getting fully indexed and get the rankings it deserves.

Blogging can get you fired

“I’m afraid I have called you here to tell you that I am obliged to terminate your employment with the firm.”

I sit.

My mouth forms a perfect “O” of astonishment.

“This is because of your internet site.”

Catherine is an English girl who was using her blog called “petite anglaise” to talk about her life and work in Paris. The blog is quite popular, she has an average of about 3000 visitors a day. The quotes above are an abstract of the conversation she had with her boss who decided to fire her because of her blog. She has been accused of bringing her ex-company – the accounting company Dixon Wilson – into disrepute.

While she claims to barely talk about work in her blog, and that she never mentionned the name of her company nor colleagues, her boss estimated that some of her posts “have brought the firm into disrepute”.

Catherine pointed to the 2 posts where she talked about work and that may have got her fired.

With hindsight, I realise this would have been a good time to say “but how can the firm be identified?” However at that precise moment my synapses probably resemble a game of join the dots.

Poor girl. She decided to sue her ex-company, I hope she is going to win.

Is Techmeme better than Google News?

Steve Bryant from eWeek published an article where he spotted Google News’ main problems “from a journalist’s POV”. While he recognizes that Google News help “infovores” find fresh information very quickly, he’s complaining about the fact that the News search engine “skips important news sources”, and sometimes prioritizes news that’s opinion.

But the problem is that Google News doesn’t (can’t?) distinguish between news and opinion.

He also notes that Google News isn’t good at ranking the original news source first.

For example, Ryan Naraine published the story about H.D. Moore’s Google malware search first. But today, when you look on Google News, the top story is an article by Information Week. (disclaimer: Information Week is a competitor to eWEEK).

The author concludes by saying that he prefers the Techmeme Model, since it credits “popularity and sources” while the other one “credits keywords”.

Google and Vertical Search

Google is actively looking for sales people to fill out their recent vertical search positions in NYC. Verticals include Travel, Finance, Local, Healthcare, Entertainment and much more.

Of course, the jobs descriptions don’t give much information about these verticals but they give us an idea of what Google is willing to do. For example, many positions like this one – a position for a Travel Vertical Manager – remind us that Google wants to expand their “offline” offers:

  • Develop client relationships with offline decision makers.
  • Develop and pitch client proposals for offline opportunities.
  • Sign up clients for offline initiatives.
  • Represent industry-level performance and issues to Vertical Director & offline product teams.
  • Drive best practice sharing across vertical to sell offline campaigns.
  • Work closely with Vertical Industry Marketing Manager on effective packaging and research strategies to develop sales collateral.
  • Train Direct Sales and Inside Sales Organization sellers on offline opportunities.

Tip of the hat: Brian Smith from Comparison Engines

Lee Odden interviews Laura Lippay – Yahoo SEO Program Manager

Lee Odden just published an excellent interview he did with Laura Lippay, SEO Program Manager for Yahoo Media Group. I first heard about Laura on CNet, when I saw her excellent SEO 101 video (she’s cute, isn’t she?). You may also have seen her posting smart comments/posts at SEOMoz, Highrankings forums , or Cre8asiteforums.
The best part of the interview is this one:

If there were 3-5 site optimization tips you were to recommend to web masters, what would they be?
1. Usability comes before SEO – better yet, they should work hand in hand. But don’t compromise your user experience for SEO. Unless you’re spamming, of course.

2. SEO isn’t just about H1 tags and title tags – more importantly, you need traffic. You need to be good enough, you need to be smart enough, and gosh darnit , people need to like you. Well, your site at least. In that respect, your client needs to see you as not just an SEO, but a strategist of sorts, and you absolutely HAVE to be a part of site building from the beginning concept stages.

3. You can listen to what everyone else preaches about what works for SEO or you can find out for yourself. Most SEO “facts” are just things they hear from other SEO’s which they heard from other SEO’s which they read in some article that who knows who wrote it, etc. Where are the cold hard facts? They’re in your data, people! Set up a tight analytics structure and go in and do things to your site and test the results for yourself. You’ll be the smartest (and richest) SEO on the block.

I think Yahoo is going to love working with such a smart person.

Of course, Lee Odden asked her if she got to know Yahoo! “secret sauce”, but she promised she doesn’t get any knowldedge from the Yahoo search team (yet?) but she said she has to “get them drunk and hope to get secrets out of them just like everyone else. ” 🙂