Friday, December 21, 2007 at 2:00 PM
If it's good enough for the Costanzas, it's good enough for Webmaster Central: it's time for a Festivus for the rest of us (webmasterus)!
Our special celebration begins not with carols and eggnog, but by remembering some of the popular Webmaster Tools features -- make that Feats of Strength -- for 2007. This year, you gained the ability to chickity-check out your backlinks (<-- that's Festivus-inspired anchor text) and tell Google you want out with URL Removal. And let's not forget Message Center and IDNA support, perfect for those times when [a-zA-Z0-9\-] just doesn't cut it.
Feel the power! Festivus Feats of Strength!
Now comes our webmaster family's traditional Airing of Grievances. You can air your woes and "awww man!"s in the comments below. Just remember that bots may crawl this blog, but we humans review the comments, so please keep your grievances constructive. :) Let us know about features you'd like implemented in Webmaster Tools, articles you'd like written in our blog or Help Center, and stuff you'd like to see in the discussion group. Bonus points if you also explain how your suggestion helps the whole Internet—not just your site's individual rankings. (But of course, we understand that your site ranking number one for all queries in all regions is truly, objectively good for everyone.)
Last, there are so many Festivus Miracles to share! Such as the many helpful members of the discussion group from all around the world, the new friendships formed between Susan Moskwa, JohnMu, Wysz, Matt D, Bergy, Patrick, Nathanj and so many webmasters, and the fun of chatting with our video watchers, fellow conference attendees, and those in the blogosphere keepin' it real.
On behalf of the entire Webmaster Central team, here's to you, Festivus Miracle and Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 2006 -- happy holidays. See you in 2008. :)
50 comments:
What is going on with the SERPS? My rank for my business name went from number one to number 18? My business name competes with just 6,000 other listings, and two of the listings above mine are parked pages. How can a parked page, with no incoming links and little relevancy achieve number 7 position?
This happened just in time for the last few days of online shopping before the xmas holiday. :( I feel Google has given me a lump of coal for xmas.
I broke out the Festivus pole just a few days ago, and the house is decorated with Festivus decor throughout.
Have a happy Festivus to you too Google!
Jen
Here's my gripe: Even though it took lots of trying, I eventually was able to get in contact with very responsive people at both Microsoft and Yahoo to help me sort out the indexing problems on a very high-profile site, but Google might as well be a black hole.
Granted the problems with Google aren't nearly as severe because quite frankly Google sucks a whole lot less, but all I want for Festivus is to have a real live human at the Googleplex contact me.
Merry Festivus!
I wish that only certain sections of the a page could be indexed. See my blog posting at http://www.planetmike.com/journal/2007/11/12/search-engine-feature-request-partial-pages/
The following features that would prove to be very helpful:
● Summarizing and compling the anchor text keyphrases in backlinks
● Showing both the NoFollow and regular backlinks and distinguishing between the two
● Showing the PR of the backlinks
● Showing the History of a webpage's PR
● Showing total amount of clicks from Google to a webpage during different timeframes
● Including data from Google's partners - such as AOL
if any of these suggestions are implemented, please acknowledge SearchEnginesWeb
I want to be able to replace the automatically generated sitemap.xml in Google Pages. If you upload sitemap.xml and then download it, you'll get the automatically generated sitemap, not the one you uploaded. The auto-generated sitemap takes precedence over the uploaded. It would be superb if this could be fixed. :)
Happy festivus to all!
A thing I would realy love, is to be able to intergrate the query stats(search terms to my website) in the analytics tool with our CMS. This so that content editors see popular searches to our site every day, and can improve the content and keywords of the site daily!
Merry Festivus!
I reckon you're going to get a load of useful requests for information features for the Webmaster Console. In my comment I'm going to take a slightly different angle and request more management features instead.
I would be absolutely brilliant if we could have some MMC like features:
* Multiple log ins with different admin/access rights
* Add Search! Rather than click 'next next next' or tackle big drop down menus it would be great if we could search for the domain report we're after. Trust me on 'Search' - reckon it could be good for Google! :p
* A changelog
* Optional Email alerts (when you can't access a site, when someone deletes a site's profile, etc)
Thanks not just for letting us comment here but also for all the amazing work you've done this year! It's very much appreciated.
Happy Hols everyone and thanks for all the great info...
David
Charlotte NC
Since I forgot to mention it in my first post, Happy Holiday's to everyone that works for Google and makes it the great search engine it is. And Happy Holiday's to my fellow webmasters as well!
Instead of my frustrating post, I should have been a little more positive, and for that I apologize.
I personally would like to see better communication with Webmasters regarding major changes in the index.
Anyway, let's all enjoy some time with our families and friends this holiday season.
Wishing everyone a great 2008!
Bill
Any violation to the webmasters guidelines should be clearly defined in the WMT. It is un-cool that I held a keyword-stuffing penalty from 2001, which was 2 1/2 years before I owned the domain. Ie. Use the registrar date to eliminate some penalties.
It should be clearly defined on why there are delays between the WMT and the actually search. For example, WMT says I have site-links, but I do not see them when my site is #1 in a search.
On the other hand, I do appreciate your suggestions on making a site better. I hope it makes it a better experience for people that visit my site.
Merry Christmas!!
I"m not a professional webmaster, and I pretty much understand everything I've stumbled across, but would suggest more links to explanation of jargon for the lay-people that are trying to get a site off the ground.
Thanks so much for your help!
Happy Festivus, maybe someday one of you can help clear our domain penaly and spread some of that ole Festivus Cheer.
www.travel-ascendng.com
Give the Adwords advertisers more quality traffic by removing the sites that degrade the organic search results when they use misleading bait & switch tactics such as "Free Widgets" in their titles and descriptions.
Happy Festivas!!!
My Holiday grievance - more like a sadness really - was having my site AirportCityCodes.com completely deleted from the index. I don't think it's a penalty, rather some odd crawl issue. How about a Christmas present of quick reinclusion, or an explanation if I was screwing up something? fyi Robots.txt is fine and there were some frame and duplicate URL problems but nothing that should have completely killed this fairly popular site.
Joe, check that link to Fort Worth on the homepage, could be considered hidden??? I'm just taking a stab at it.
Merry Christmas !!!
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEE replace the stupid site selection div dropdown for web master tools. If you could make it like analytics < select > dropdown it would make my life much easier.
When flipping through my sites since it doesn't show where I am in the list I lose my place.
That's all I really want for Christmas. Oh, or a Wii.
So to recap:
1. Wii
2. Remove the stupid div dropdown (props for div javascript goodness, but -1 for usability)
So is it happy or merry webmasterus?
Did I say Christmas? I meant Festivus.
hii guys,
Merry Xmas to all of u.
i'm facing a problem, my link section is not updated since around 1 month. but Google crawls my site every second day. is there any problem with my site.
http://thecelebrityblogs.blogspot.com
Regds
Jean
What's the deal with the google search image looking all christmas'y? Why do that when the the hover image say happy holidays? Christmas is the only holiday this year celebrated on the 25th. As a catholic I am offened with all the political correctness. Either acknowledge it properly or don't do it at all. This political correctness crap has got to stop. If some one wishes me a happy hanukkah am I offended no! I am happy that they are wishing me well from what they know in there religion.
Merry christmas
I've made a donation in you Googlers' names to the Human Fund.
my grievance is that organized manipulation ("googlebombs") still are effective and not detected and corrected. for example:
forum.hucksarmy.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4455
As much as I have come to love google. Something struck me today. This festivus "air your grievences" comment will have 2 from me. The first being.... this is the only place I have found to air grievences! I wanted to report the other issue, a minor one, and could find no place to even do it!
So... I hit preferences and once again the accursed "SafeSearch" had turned on again. It occured to me, isn't it VERY poorly named?
What does blockign explicit images have to do with safety? When did an image rip someone off (explicit or otherwise)? or fall on them and give them a concussion? or burn them?
You should rename it "Prude Search" or something as silly as what it does.
Equating it with "Safety" is utter nonsequitor.
-Steve
Faster update for local google would be nice. My local listings have been "Awaiting next update" since August.
Despite that I've added the address to the footer of every page, added and verified the listing in local, when you search for my business it has an incorrect street address and map in the SERP. (The "Show Map of" bit)
May Joy be your gift at Christmas and may Faith, Hope and Love be your treasures in the New Year.
Greetings and lots of love from Malaysia.
Hi folks--
Thanks for all the suggestions and holiday wishes! A couple comments:
@recover: I'll pass your suggestion along to the Google Pages team; in the meantime, you could always submit a Sitemap with a different filename.
@Edi-L: Sitelinks don't show up for every query; it's possible that several "candidate" sitelinks have been selected for your site, but they haven't been deemed relevant for the queries you're trying. More here.
@Jeannet: The data shown in Webmaster Tools is refreshed periodically, so it's normal for it to not be 100% up-to-date all the time.
@Stephen: You can air your grievances year-round in our Webmaster Help Group! Specifically, questions about Webmaster Tools go here and webmaster-related feature requests go here.
Happy Holidays to the Google crew and everybody else. Here is a belated Christmas e-card http://www.yoyita.com/Happy_Holidays_
Feliz_Navidad_Merry_Christmas_Frohe_
Weihnachten_Joyeux_Noel_yoyita.html
Please read I don't know if this is the appropiate forum to post this.
I have a question I am an Art Gallery in 10 languages, I am from Nicaragua, but I have lived in US for around 30 years, I don't show up under arts or art galleries in US in Google or DMOZ, after 8 years in the net.
related:http://www.yoyita.com/ just show sites in Nicaragua and not all Art Galleries. How can I change that and where is it coming from?
Thanks God You guys have started to see some of my languages, but not all of them.
Happy Holidays again.
All I want for Festivus is an explanation (in plain english) of why my pagerank dropped from 4 to 2, and then 0...
My content is still ranking well in search results, so the rumours that pagerank doesn't matter much seem true, but I'm still confused as to why my pagerank is so low. I've tried tweaking up my blog template to eliminate as many links out as possible and to ensure I'm not breaking any of the 'rules', but I can't work out what could still be causing problems.
A report in webmaster tools that indicates WHY pagerank is low would be useful.
BTW - webmaster tools pagerank help page states that the info includes which page had the highest page rank over the previous three months. NO, it doesn't. The info page only lists summary info of overall site pagerank and bargraphs of average pagerank for individual pages. Accurate help pages would be nice.
http://enoughwealth.com
It would be wonderful if web results (not google sitelinks) from a google search could be manually excluded from future google search results.
Happy New Year!
If it's not too late... my wishes for the new year are:
1) Domain hosting. You are doing everything else, it would be so nice if we didn't have to deal with another ISP just to host a domain.
2) Let me create my own templates in Google Apps. The templates you have are great for non-geeks like my brother or mother, but I have the skills to produce exactly what I want... now I just need the permission.
3) Integrate blogger and YouTube with Google Apps.
4) World peace. Yeah, that one might require all of us to work on it, but if you are able to do the other three, my world would have significantly more peace!
Keep up the good work,
Waldo
API Access with Page and Site health stats.
For example, at the page level, Meta Tag=True, Meta Desc=True, Meta Keys=True, Duplicate Content=False, H1 Tag=True, Image Alt Tag=True, Is Indexed=True, External Links=20, Internal Links=999, etc. etc. etc.
At the site level:
Duplicate content instances, potential spider traps, error page returning 200, redirects using 302, etc.
Possibly allow us to configure what we want to keep tabs on. Now that would be a tool!
Happy Festivus!
Thanks for catching and penalizing my text-hiding competitor! Hmm.. The ol' 1px x 1px div box full of copy does not work like it used to ;)
Beau
hey guys
how often google update the pagerank?
I love this team work
Guest accounts for Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools which can view but not change things (important for those dealing with big companies).
Give us a real web search API again.
Oh, and let me label draft GMail messages!
Hi Webmasters of Google,
Just to let you know that for Singapore it is best to use English as your default language for when users even though this country have over 70% of its population are Chinese race. English is their 1st language in education, thus will be more appropriate to use English (EN)instead of Chinese (ZH) as your default for folks coming from Singapore IP addresses.
Thanks & keep up the great work!
Jason (Singapore)
It bothers me that I had a site apparently banned by Google that had been online since 1998 with a Page rank of 6 - and I have no idea why. I've used the apply for reconsideration about 3 times in the past 3 or 4 months, yet no response. http://www.tudefitness.com
My gripe is if something like this happens, a person should be able to get an explanation. It is particularly upsetting not to get a response when I have used no black hat methods or anything.
I've heard this complaint many times and wonder why Google can't understand that many of us are not doing anything wrong - at least not that we know of. Some sort of explanation or review should be in place.
Am I wrong?
Am I wrong?
Nope you are right. This comment series is frustrating and classic GoogleSpeak - one way communication where their power over search translates into non-responsiveness.
Hey - there's my Festivus grievance!
how to protect your googlebot from spam visit my website
My business' site was bumped after 17 years and I have no real idea why. I can find no way of communicating with Google except through the "reconsideration form" and I see from comments here that this can take months. I've also read that people have had this process expedited into "days". Does anyone know how this is done?
Sweet Team, What about listing flash based sites, Adobe created new implement for keyword in Flash 8 - CS3 but google can't display at all, Just dynamic ones... And thanks for tools...
hai i have a blog an it in top 100 position for busby seo search but it is nowhere in busby seo challenge. how can this happen as my blogname itself is busyseochallenge.blogspot.com and some webmasters told me that google doesn't give good ranks to .blogspot even though blogger is google's blogging enviornment. I have pretty good traffic and i update my blog frequently, have a good amount of dofollow links....now how to go for the SERPS in busby seo challenge keyword?Is it sandboxed by google for that keyword
it is all being reloaded again, thanks all
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