I’ve been so excited about the development in the past year on the Google Webmaster YouTube channel. One notable video I wanted to mention to everyone is the State of The Index 2009. At Pubcon in Las Vegas 2009, Matt Cutts gave a presentation covering various topics Google has done for users, web developers and web designers
Although I follow along on the Google Webmasters blog (and other Google blogs for that matter)… having these videos are such a nice addition. Like most of us, sometimes we don’t feel like reading. We spend our daily lives catching up on emails, Facebook status messages, news, etc… who has time to read blogs? I’ve found videos are a quick way for me stay up to date on what’s happening in the world of Google. What’s awesome is Google is now also publishing notes from conferences which really helps stay informed without even attending.
Even if you aren’t a web developer/designer, I encourage you to watch at least a part of the video. However, if you don’t have time to watch the video, here’s an outline with links.
Users
- Chrome (browser), Wave (real time communication), Android (projects for the android platform)
- Music One Box – search for artist / song title / lyric and buy it
- Google Squared – displays information in a spreadsheet format
- Google Social Search – Google Social Search is a method to find public content on various social networking profiles about people within your circle.
- Show Options (Google Tool Belt) – This feature I think is one of the best for users. With Show Options, you can isolate your search into specific areas. Very powerful tool for bloggers.
Web Developers
- Code.google.com/speed – Tools to test your site speed… a topic I will be diving into extensively over the next few weeks.
- Webpagetest.org -Not a Google product, but worth a visit.
- Code.google.com/closure – Javascript optimizer, library, and templating system
- Google Webtool kit - Open Source applications used by Google
Webmasters
- Rel=canonical - Worried about duplicate content? Here’s a great way to display your “preferred” version.
- Ignored URL – In your Google Webmasters under Site Configuration–> Settings, you can specify specific URLS ( up to 15 parameters) for Googlebot to ignore. This can come in handy when reducing duplicate content.
- Fetch as Googlebot – When you want to see exactly what Google is viewing, try the fetch as Googlebot function.
- Better malware warnings – Google now has an area in Webmasters to notify you of any malware type activity.
- Message forwarding – Whoo hoo! Although I try to check webmaster tools weekly, getting email notifications will be a helpful reminder.
- Keyword details – In Google Webmasters under Your Site On The Web–> Keywords, Webmasters now reports the significance of various keywords on your site. I was really happy to see this type of data as it will help determine the impact of keyword content rewrites when we work on onsite-SEO activities.
Google Communication
- Webmasters blog - added more posts!
- SEO Beginners Guide – Contrary to popular believe, Google does support SEO when done in an ethical, white hat manner. To clarify any confusion in the past, they publish a SEO beginners guide for the public. I encourage any person with a website at least familiarize yourself with SEO . As you will read, SEO is not difficult, just time consuming!
- Don’t use keyword meta tags – In the past meta keyword tags were stuffed with various words that were sometimes unrelated. To prohibit the abuse of meta keyword tag usage, Google announced as of September 2009 they no longer view this as a factor.
- Webmaster in different languages
- Webmaster Videos – added more videos!
Caffeine
- Rewrite of indexing structure – In my recent article, Google Caffeine: Changes for 2010, Caffeine is the “new” search algorithm. From what I’ve seen so far on our/clients sites, I have seen fluctuation in search results (some good, some concerning). Only time will tell in terms of how this will impact the overall strategy of SEO.