Online Marketing Blog » Google

Google Comes Up with a New Webspam Reporting Form

George — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:52:02 +0000

In its latest move to remove the unwanted or irrelevant listings from its search results Google has come up with a new form for reporting webspam. Webspams are sites which tend to violate the Google Webmaster Guidelines and trick Google so that they rank higher in the search result pages. Google have been fighting against the spam results for a long time and every time it has come with features which were helpful in removing bad websites from the result pages.

Google had already provided the option for the users to report webspam, but this time Google has come up with an improved version of the webspam reporting form. The new and improved webspam reporting form by Google provides more specific options for the users, so that their complaints would reach the most appropriate team at Google to handle it. This would certainly help Google to improve the quality of their search result along with a much better user experience.

Some of the major types of sites that causes a bad user experience in the results page include sites that involve in paid link business, objectionable content, malware sites, phishing sites and other irrelevant types. Earlier all these types of sites were reported with single web form and as a result it took a longer period for these reports to reach the respective team at Google. But with the new Webspam reporting form by Google, you would be able to tell Google more specifically about the reason for reporting and under which category those web pages are. So reporting through the new webspam form will help Google in sending those reports for the most relevant team that that handles the same and as a result a fast response from Google could be expected.

So next time if you come across any irrelevant or spam web page listing in Google search result, don’t hesitate to report it through the Google’s Webspam reporting form so that you could experience a much better search result next time.

Now Submit URLs to Google on Demand

George — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 05:25:35 +0000

Google Webmasters Tool has now introduced a new feature which helps you to ask Google to index your web pages on demand. The new feature comes with the Fetch as Googlebot option in the Webmasters tools which helps you to see how your web page appears to Google. If there is no issues in fetching your web page, you can see a “Success” status on the same page. Now, you can also see an option saying “Submit to Index” and once you click that button your particular page would be submitted to be indexed by Google.

Once you submit the web page to be indexed by Google, the Googlebot with crawl that ULR within a day. After that Google will consider it for including in their index, but they do not guarantee to index all the submitted URLs. Google would be still using their regular process which they used to imply on the URLs that were discovered before this update.

The new option would come handy for you in many ways. Consider that you have a new site or added some new pages on to your website. Now by using the new feature you can ask Google to find and index the page on demand, when compared with the old way of waiting for Google to discover your page naturally and then indexing them. This would be helpful for you to speed up the indexing of your website and its pages.

The other case is that you already have a page that is indexed by Google and you have recently made some updates on the same page. Now you would like Google to index the updated content, but you had to wait for Google to crawl in naturally before the new option was launched. With the new option you can submit that pages in Google Webmaster tools and ask and inform Google to index that page.

You can also submit URLs that are already indexed in order to refresh them, say if you’ve updated some key content for the event you’re hosting this weekend and want to make sure we see it in time. It could also help if you’ve accidentally published information that you didn’t mean to, and want to update our cached version after you’ve removed the information from your site.

AdWords Express Launched by Google

George — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 05:32:15 +0000

Google has officially announced Adwords Express, which is a simpler and faster way to start an online advertising in just under 5 minutes. Google had launched this product as Google Boost in October last year and at that time it was open only for a few local businesses. Adwords Express is actually meant for small businesses that do not have an Adwords advertising campaign for their business. The Adwords Express allows these business to start their online advertising in a much faster and easier way.

With Adwords Express, your potential customers would find it easy to find your website or Place page and helps them to quickly connect with you and thereby enhance your business. Unlike the regular Adwords campaign, here you just need to provide some basic business information and create your online ad. Once you sign up for Adwords Express, your advertising campaign would be automatically managed for you by Adwords Express and would help you in figuring out the searches that should be displayed for a particular search. As with the regular Adwords campaign, your ads would be shown on the top or the right hand side of the search results pages. You ads would also be highlighted as a distinctive blue pin in Google Maps.

Like the Google Adwords, the new Adwords Express also prompts you to pay only when someone clicks on your advertisements and it also optimizes you ads in such a way that you get the most out of your campaign and budget. You can easily sign up for Adwords Express by visiting http://www.google.com/awexpress . Also watch this small video to get an idea on how to create and run an online campaign through Adwords Express.

Social Media Firm Fridge Acquired By Google

George — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:13:30 +0000

In yet another major acquisition, Google has decided to by the social media firm Fridge. Fridge consists of simple groups which help in the personal and private sharing of events, media and conversation. It is very much easy to use this social media site, as anyone can create a group and invite their friends to join, and share photos, videos, content etc.

The acquisition of Fridge by Google has made it sure that, Google is certainly planning to boost up Google+. Google+ is Google’s strong reply for Facebook and Google seems to have hit the right spot with the launch of Google +. The acquisition of Fridge would certainly be aimed at enhancing the activities at Google Plus. Fridge has officially become a part of Google with an announcement on Thursday, but the terms and conditions are yet to be disclosed.

The major aim of the acquisition is to provide more strength to the concept of Google+ Circles, where users would be able to share photos with a specific online group. All the groups would be based on a particular interest, and this would provide a much better and deeper interaction.

Right now it is very much time consuming and a difficult task to create circles for different networks in Google+. The acquisition move would certainly ease up the circle creation process and would encourage more users to create specific circles in Google+.

Fridge has already announced in their website that they are shutting down their operations and joining Google. The move would also help Google plus in the coming days as Google+ app is already underway and once it is applicable on all the smart phone we can see the real effect.

Better Keyword Research With Google Adwords Keyword Tool – Video Tutorial

George — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 06:01:59 +0000

Keyword Research is one of the building blocks of an SEO campaign and the success of the SEO campaign for any website mainly depends on the keyword research part. If the right keywords are researched and selected, then the chances of increasing the search engine visibility of a website is high. On the other part if the keyword research part goes wrong, then whole of the SEO campaign would end on a disastrous note.

So, to achieve a successful SEO campaign it is very much important to make sure that you have researched the right / potential keywords for your website. The keyword research part cannot be taken lightly as this is the major thing that influences the search engine performance of your website.

There are various keyword research tools available which helps you to do keyword research for your website. Some are free, which there are paid keyword research tools which gives you more deep and sophisticated keyword ideas. Of the free keyword research tools, my favorite is the Google Adwords keyword tool, which is more simple and easy to use. The Google Adwords Keyword tools is the most recommended one it is also considered as the best tool for beginners.

Even if this tool is free, you can do a great keyword research if you know how to use this tool efficiently. The tool shows many useful data which can help you in researching the keywords in a much better way. You can also export the keyword list which is yet another good feature of this keyword research tools.

Below is a small video clip tutorial, which teaches you how to do keyword research for your website using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. I stumbled on this video clip while I was searching for something and thought that it would be good for those who would like to use this tool. So I decided to share this on my blog. Hope you enjoy it.

Google Updates Its Page Rank

George — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:40:37 +0000

Google have recently given an updates on its PageRank and as a result most of the websites have started showing a difference in their existing page ranks. You can get your updated Google Page rank via the Google toolbar and see whether your site page rank has improved or not. Most of the webmasters have reported a change in their existing Google Page rank.

Google has around more than 200 signals that it uses to determines the ranking of a website and Google Page Rank is just one of them. Even though Google PageRank does not have high significance like it had before, most of the webmasters wish to have an increased Google Page Rank as they consider it an added benefit and a privilege. Once Google had also stated in its blog that there is no need to worry about the page ranks and their is no point in focusing more on the page rank.

Most of the forums, groups and communities related to SEO have been talking about the recent Google Page Rank update and from this it is quite evident that Google has rolled out its Page Rank update across the globe. Most of the webmasters in the forums were quite happy about the page rank update they got, while some of the webmasters experienced a decreased Google Page Rank update.

Google does not update the Page rank on the Google tool bar too often and does it only once or twice in an year. The last time Google Updated its page rank was almost 6 months ago. For those who have got their Google Page Rank improved would have enough reasons to be happy as it might have come as a result of their hard work throughout the year. Those who didn’t get an improved PR does not need to worry, as page rank is not a real matter to worry as long as you are getting quality and relevant traffic from the search engines and other online channels.

How to Effectively Implement Google +1 Button – Live Webinar on June 21st

George — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 06:32:22 +0000

Google had recently launched the +1 button which allows the visitors to recommend a particular content on Google directly from a website. Google has launched the +1 button in its mission to show improved search results and there by improved traffic to a website. Many of us might have started using the Google +1 button and have different experience. Some of my friends even had some issues installing the +1 button on their website, due to some unknown issue.

Its only a short span of time and too early to explain the benefits of the +1 button. It will require some time before we can authoritatively speak about the advantages or issues associated with the Google + button.

Timothy Jordan, Google Developer advocate is conducting a webinar on Tuesday (June 21st) to explain more about the technical aspects that are associated with the implementation of the +1 button. He would also be offering tips to make sure that the +1 button is used to its full potential. Some of the major topics that would be covered during the webinar would be.

1) Getting started
2) Best practices
3) Advanced options
4) Measurement
5) Q&A

Register here to attend this informative webinar on Google +1 button.

Google Set to Acquire Display Advertising Leader Admeld

George — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 07:32:00 +0000

In a deal worth $400 million, Google is all set to acquire the leading ad optimization and online marketing firm Admeld and Google plans to use Admeld along with their DoubleClick in order to help publishers to select the best ads across various networks and exchanges. Admeld is one of the top online marketing company that helps publishers to advertise online and maximize their revenue with unique marketing strategies and advertising technologies. The company is the top of its kind in display advertising and some of the major customer include big names such as Answers.com, FOX News, IDG TechNetwork, Hearst Television, Discovery and The Weather Channel.

This acquisition would give a leading edge to Google in terms of display advertising, where they have a long way to go. The traditional ad platform of Google mainly consisted of text and search ads and this move would help them in their mission to be the numero uno in display advertising.

Display advertising is considered to be one of the most effective ways of advertising, but most of the companies have stayed back from it due to the complexity involved in it. Google aims to make online display advertising more simple and efficient by improving its support and services to its customers.

Display advertising is more of interaction and being innovative, and this is the area where Admeld have tasted success in the recent past. As per the marketing experts display advertising has the most potential of attracting new consumers and with the increase of digital advertising most of the advertisers are looking out for well optimized results with good ROI. This acquisition is sure to provide diverse varieties in Google’s search offerings. Google also aims to defend their position as being the top in the world of online search.

How To Block a Google Sitelink

George — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 05:53:39 +0000

Sitelinks are those links that all the webmasters hopes to have along with their websites in Google search results. Sitelinks are those links which appear below the website in the Google search results and not all the websites have sitelinks in the search results. The presence of sitelinks in the search results makes it easier for the users to navigate through different sections of your website.

You cannot make sitelinks appear below your site’s search results in Google, rather Google’s algorithm decides whether to display sitelinks for your site or not. To display sitelinks for your site, Google’s algorithm takes certain parameters such as the search engine friendliness of your site structure, the relevancy of the section for the user query, how you optimized your internal links and its anchor text etc. If the website fails to show these parameters, Google would not be showing sitelinks on its search results.

Google does not manually check your website to grant sitelinks and it is fully automated as of now. Getting sitelinks is much beneficial to your site, as you would be getting more traffic to your website from a single search query. This happens mainly as the user would be able to see other important pages or sections of your website in a single search query. All the new websites does not get sitelinks initially but once it is optimized in the best way, we can expect sitelinks to appear in the search results.

How to Block Certain Sitelinks from Appearing

Now your site has got sitelinks and you will feel pretty happy about getting the privilege of having sitelinks in Google search results. What if some of your site links are quite irrelevant to your page content or few of the sitelinks that are showing up are not making you happy. In this case you would like to have those irrelevant sitelinks removed from the search results.

Google provides you the option to do this through its Webmaster tool, and if your site is submitted and verified using the Google Webmaster tool, then you would be able to see the sitelinks in the admin section. Google provides you with the option to individually block the sitelinks from appearing in the search results. The steps for blocking Google sitelinks are given below.

1) In the dashboard of your website’s Google webmaster account, click on the link “Site Configuration” on the link menus appearing on the left.

2) After clicking on the above link you can see an expanded list of links and click on the link named “Sitelinks”

3) Now you can see a list of the sitelinks that are appering in Google search results, along with a button named “Block“.

4) Click on the “Block” button corresponding to the sitelink that you wish to remove and you would be taken to a expanded section asking for the reason for blocking that particular sitelink.

5) Select the appropriate reason and you can also add your comment. Now click on the “Block” button again and now you have successfuly posted a request to remove that sitelink.

After doing this it may take a few days before Google removes that particular sitelink from its search results. Till then it may appear their on the search results for your website.

Google Webmaster Verification Plugin for Hosted WordPress Blogs

George — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 06:44:36 +0000

With the launch of the new Google Webmaster Tool verification plugin for hosted WordPress blogs, it has become easier to verify your blog with Google Webmaster tool and that too in a couple of clicks. With this new Webmaster verification plugin, you don’t need to copy paste tokens anymore and new plugin itself calls the Google Webmaster Site verification API to enable the automation of the entire process.

You can directly install the plugin from the control panel of your WordPress blog or you can download the Official Google Webmaster Verification Plugin from the WordPress plugin site. Once you have installed the plugin and verified it with Google Webmaster tool, then you would be able to various search statistics and other vital information about your blog such as the number of subscribers, crawl error, malware details, backlink details etc.

The plugin will work on WordPress 3.0 (or higher), PHP 5.2.0 (or higher), the JSON PHP extensions, and the CURL PHP extensions and it would not work if the mentioned specifications are not met. The installation process is so simple and once you have installed the Google verification plugin on your self hosted WordPress blog, you need to activate it from your control panel. After activating it you need to click the “Start Verification” link which is available under “Settings” on the left side bar.

Google will give permission for the Plugin on the blog via the Google Site Verification API and once it is completed, you would be able to view all the details on your Google webmaster verification tool.