More Precise Index Status Data for Your Site Variations

Webmaster Level: Intermediate

The Google Webmaster Tools Index Status feature reports how many pages on your site are indexed by Google. In the past, we didn’t show index status data for HTTPS websites independently, but rather we included everything in the HTTP site’s report. In the last months, we’ve heard from you that you’d like to use Webmaster Tools to track your indexed URLs for sections of your website, including the parts that use HTTPS.

We’ve seen that nearly 10% of all URLs already use a secure connection to transfer data via HTTPS, and we hope to see more webmasters move their websites from HTTP to HTTPS in the future. We’re happy to announce a refinement in the way your site’s index status data is displayed in Webmaster Tools: the Index Status feature now tracks your site’s indexed URLs for each protocol (HTTP and HTTPS) as well as for verified subdirectories.

This makes it easy for you to monitor different sections of your site. For example, the following URLs each show their own data in Webmaster Tools Index Status report, provided they are verified separately:

HTTP	HTTPS
http://www.example.com/	https://www.example.com/
http://example.com	https://example.com
http://www.example.com/folder/	https://www.example.com/folder/
http://example.com/folder/	https://example.com/folder/

The refined data will be visible for webmasters whose site's URLs are on HTTPS or who have subdirectories verified, such as https://example.com/folder/. Data for subdirectories will be included in the higher-level verified sites on the same hostname and protocol.

If you have a website on HTTPS or if some of your content is indexed under different subdomains, you will see a change in the corresponding Index Status reports. The screenshots below illustrate the changes that you may see on your HTTP and HTTPS sites’ Index Status graphs for instance:

HTTP site’s Index Status showing drop

HTTPS site’s Index Status showing increase

An “Update” annotation has been added to the Index Status graph for March 9th, showing when we started collecting this data. This change does not affect the way we index your URLs, nor does it have an impact on the overall number of URLs indexed on your domain. It is a change that only affects the reporting of data in Webmaster Tools user interface.

In order to see your data correctly, you will need to verify all existing variants of your site (www., non-www., HTTPS, subdirectories, subdomains) in Google Webmaster Tools. We recommend that your preferred domains and canonical URLs are configured accordingly.

Note that if you wish to submit a Sitemap, you will need to do so for the preferred variant of your website, using the corresponding URLs. Robots.txt files are also read separately for each protocol and hostname.

We hope that you’ll find this update useful, and that it’ll help you monitor, identify and fix indexing problems with your website. You can find additional details in our Index Status Help Center article. As usual, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask in our webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by Zineb Ait Bahajji, WTA, thanks to the Webmaster Tools team.

Musical artists: your official tour dates in the Knowledge Graph

Webmaster level: all

When music lovers search for their favorite band on Google, we often show them a Knowledge Graph panel with lots of information about the band, including the band’s upcoming concert schedule. It’s important to fans and artists alike that this schedule be accurate and complete. That’s why we’re trying a new approach to concert listings. In our new approach, all concert information for an artist comes directly from that artist’s official website when they add structured data markup.

If you’re the webmaster for a musical artist’s official website, you have several choices for how to participate:

1. You can implement schema.org markup on your site. That’s easier than ever, since we’re supporting the new JSON-LD format (alongside RDFa and microdata) for this feature.
2. Even easier, you can install an events widget that has structured data markup built in, such as Bandsintown, BandPage, ReverbNation, Songkick, or GigPress.
3. You can label the site’s events with your mouse using Google’s point-and-click webmaster tool: Data Highlighter.

All these options are explained in detail in our Help Center. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in our Webmaster Help forums. So don’t you worry `bout a schema.org/Thing ... just mark up your site’s events and let the good schema.org/Times roll!

Posted by Justin Boyan, Product Manager, Google Search

3 tips to find hacking on your site, and ways to prevent and fix it

Google shows this message in search results for sites that we believe may have been compromised.You might not think your site is a target for hackers, but it's surprisingly common. Hackers target large numbers of sites all over the web in order to exploit the sites' users or reputation.

One common way hackers take advantage of vulnerable sites is by adding spammy pages. These spammy pages are then used for various purposes, such as redirecting users to undesired or harmful destinations. For example, we’ve recently seen an increase in hacked sites redirecting users to fake online shopping sites.

Once you recognize that your website may have been hacked, it’s important to diagnose and fix the problem as soon as possible. We want webmasters to keep their sites secure in order to protect users from spammy or harmful content.

3 tips to help you find hacked content on your site

1. Check your site for suspicious URLs or directories
   Keep an eye out for any suspicious activity on your site by performing a “site:” search of your site in Google, such as [site:example.com]. Are there any suspicious URLs or directories that you do not recognize?
   
   You can also set up a Google Alert for your site. For example, if you set a Google Alert for [site:example.com (viagra|cialis|casino|payday loans)], you’ll receive an email when these keywords are detected on your site.
   
   
2. Look for unnatural queries on the Search Queries page in Webmaster Tools
   The Search Queries page shows Google Web Search queries that have returned URLs from your site. Look for unexpected queries as it can be an indication of hacked content on your site.
   
   Don’t be quick to dismiss queries in different languages. This may be the result of spammy pages in other languages placed on your website.
   
   
   

   

   Example of an English site hacked with Japanese content.

3. Enable email forwarding in Webmaster Tools
   Google will send you a message if we detect that your site may be compromised. Messages appear in Webmaster Tools’ Message Center but it's a best practice to also forward these messages to your email. Keep in mind that Google won’t be able to detect all kinds of hacked content, but we hope our notifications will help you catch things you may have missed.

Tips to fix and prevent hacking

• Stay informed
  The Security Issues section in Webmaster Tools will show you hacked pages that we detected on your site. We also provide detailed information to help you fix your hacked site. Make sure to read through this documentation so you can quickly and effectively fix your site.


• Protect your site from potential attacks
  It's better to prevent sites from being hacked than to clean up hacked content. Hackers will often take advantage of security vulnerabilities on commonly used website management software. Here are some tips to keep your site safe from hackers:


• Always keep the software that runs your website up-to-date.
• If your website management software tools offer security announcements, sign up to get the latest updates.
• If the software for your website is managed by your hosting provider, try to choose a provider that you can trust to maintain the security of your site.

We hope this post makes it easier for you to identify, fix, and prevent hacked spam on your site. If you have any questions, feel free to post in the comments, or drop by the Google Webmaster Help Forum.

If you find suspicious sites in Google search results, please report them using the Spam Report tool.

Posted by Megumi Hitomi, Japanese Search Quality Team

Affiliate programs and added value

Webmaster level: All

Our quality guidelines warn against running a site with thin or scraped content without adding substantial added value to the user. Recently, we’ve seen this behavior on many video sites, particularly in the adult industry, but also elsewhere. These sites display content provided by an affiliate program—the same content that is available across hundreds or even thousands of other sites.

If your site syndicates content that’s available elsewhere, a good question to ask is: “Does this site provide significant added benefits that would make a user want to visit this site in search results instead of the original source of the content?” If the answer is “No,” the site may frustrate searchers and violate our quality guidelines. As with any violation of our quality guidelines, we may take action, including removal from our index, in order to maintain the quality of our users’ search results. If you have any questions about our guidelines, you can ask them in our Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by Chris Nelson, Search Quality Team

Changes in crawl error reporting for redirects

Webmaster level: intermediate-advanced

In the past, we have seen occasional confusion by webmasters regarding how crawl errors on redirecting pages were shown in Webmaster Tools. It's time to make this a bit clearer and easier to diagnose! While it used to be that we would report the error on the original - redirecting - URL, we'll now show the error on the final URL - the one that actually returns the error code.

Let's look at an example:

URL A redirects to URL B, which in turn returns an error. The type of redirect, and type of error is unimportant here.

In the past, we would have reported the error observed at the end under URL A. Now, we'll instead report it as URL B. This makes it much easier to diagnose the crawl errors as they're shown in Webmaster Tools. Using tools like cURL or your favorite online server header checker, you can now easily confirm that this error is actually taking place on URL B.

This change may also be visible in the total error counts for some websites. For example, if your site is moving to a new domain, you'll only see these errors for the new domain (assuming the old domain redirects correctly), which might result in noticeable changes in the total error counts for those sites.

Note that this change only affects how these crawl errors are shown in Webmaster Tools. Also, remember that having crawl errors for URLs that should be returning errors (e.g. they don't exist) does not negatively affect the rest of the website's indexing or ranking (also as discussed on Google+).

We hope this change makes it a bit easier to track down crawl errors, and to clean up the accidental ones that you weren't aware of! If you have any questions, feel free to post here, or drop by in the Google Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by John Mueller, Website Error Analyst

More detailed search queries in Webmaster Tools

Webmaster level: intermediate

To help jump-start your year and make metrics for your site more actionable, we've updated one of the most popular features in Webmaster Tools: data in the search queries feature will no longer be rounded / bucketed. This change will become visible over the next few days.

The search queries feature gives insights into the searches that have at least one page from your website shown in the search results. It collects these "impressions" together with the times when users visited your site - the "clicks" - and displays these for the last 90 days.

Before and after:

We hope this makes it easier for you to see the finer details of how users are finding your website, and when they're clicking through. Should you have any questions, feel free to visit our help forum.

Posted by John Mueller, frequent searcher & Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Switzerland

Improved Search Queries stats for separate mobile sites

Webmaster Level: All

Search Queries in Webmaster Tools just became more cohesive for those who manage a mobile site on a separate URL from desktop, such as mobile on m.example.com and desktop on www. In Search Queries, when you view your m. site* and set Filters to “Mobile,” from Dec 31, 2013 onwards, you’ll now see:

• Queries where your m. pages appeared in search results for mobile browsers
• Queries where Google applied Skip Redirect. This means that, while search results displayed the desktop URL, the user was automatically directed to the corresponding m. version of the URL (thus saving the user from latency of a server-side redirect).

Skip Redirect information (impressions, clicks, etc.) calculated with mobile site.

Prior to this Search Queries improvement, Webmaster Tools reported Skip Redirect impressions with the desktop URL. Now we’ve consolidated information when Skip Redirect is triggered, so that impressions, clicks, and CTR are calculated solely with the verified m. site, making your mobile statistics more understandable.

Best practices if you have a separate m. site

Here are a few search-friendly recommendations for those publishing content on a separate m. site:

• Follow our advice on Building Smartphone-Optimized Websites
• On the desktop page, add a special link rel="alternate" tag pointing to the corresponding mobile URL. This helps Googlebot discover the location of your site's mobile pages.
• On the mobile page, add a link rel="canonical" tag pointing to the corresponding desktop URL.
• Use the HTTP Vary: User-Agent header if your servers automatically redirect users based on their user agent/device.
• Verify ownership of both the desktop (www) and mobile (m.) sites in Webmaster Tools for improved communication and troubleshooting information specific to each site.

* Be sure you've verified ownership for your mobile site!

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead

So long, 2013, and thanks for all the fish

Now that 2013 is almost over, we'd love to take a quick look back, and venture a glimpse into the future. Some of the important topics on our blog from 2013 were around mobile, internationalization, and search quality in general. Here are some of the most popular new posts from this year:

• Changes in rankings of smartphone search results
• Introducing "x-default hreflang" for international landing pages
• 5 common mistakes with rel=canonical
• A reminder about selling links that pass PageRank
• View manual webspam actions in Webmaster Tools
• The Webmaster Academy goes international
• We created a first steps cheat sheet for friends & family
• In-depth articles in search results
• Make the most of Search Queries in Webmaster Tools
• rel="author" frequently asked (advanced) questions
• Getting started with structured data
• Backlinks and reconsideration requests
• Making smartphone sites load fast
• Easier recovery for hacked sites
• So long, 2013, and thanks for all the fish

It's been a busy year here on the blog. We hope that our posts here have helped to make these - sometimes complex - topics a bit easier to understand. Is there anything you would have wanted more information about? Let us know in the comments!

Our Help Forum and office hours hangouts have also been a place for helpful, insightful, and sometimes controversial discussions. It's not always easy to find ways to improve websites, or to solve technical & usability issues that users post about, so we're extremely thankful to have such a fantastic group of Top Contributors that give advice and provide feedback there.

Where are we headed in 2014? Only time will tell, but I'm sure we'll see more information for the general webmaster, hard-core technical advice, ways to make mobile sites even better, rockin' Webmaster Tools updates, tips on securing your site & its connections, and more. Are you ready? Don't forget your towel & let's go!

On behalf of all the webmaster help forum guides, we wish you happy holidays & a great 2014.

Posted by Zineb Ait Bahajji and John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analysts

Improving URL removals on third-party sites

Webmaster level: all

Content on the Internet changes or disappears, and occasionally it's helpful to have search results for it updated quickly. Today we launched our improved public URL removal tool to make it easier to request updates based on changes on other people's websites. You can find it at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals

This tool is useful for removals on other peoples' websites. You could use this tool if a page has been removed completely, or if it was just changed and you need to have the snippet & cached page removed. If you're the webmaster of the site, then using the Webmaster Tools URL removal feature is faster & easier.

How to request a page be removed from search results

If the page itself was removed completely, you can request that it's removed from Google's search results. For this, it's important that the page returns the proper HTTP result code (403, 404, or 410), has a noindex robots meta tag, or is blocked by the robots.txt (blocking via robots.txt may not prevent indexing of the URL permanently). You can check the HTTP result code with a HTTP header checker. While we attempt to recognize "soft-404" errors, having the website use a clear response code is always preferred. Here's how to submit a page for removal:

1. Enter the URL of the page. As before, this needs to be the exact URL as indexed in our search results. Here's how to find the URL.
2. The analysis tool will confirm that the page is gone. Confirm the request to complete the submission.
3. There's no step three!
   

How to request a page's cache & snippet be removed from search results

If the page wasn't removed, you can also use this tool to let us know that a text on a page (such as a name) has been removed or changed. It'll remove the snippet & cached page in Google's search results until our systems have been able to reprocess the page completely (it won't affect title or ranking). In addition to the page's URL, you'll need at least one word that used to be on the page but is now removed. You can learn more about cache removals in our Help Center.

1. Enter the URL of the page which has changed. This needs to be the exact URL as indexed in our search results. Here's how to find the URL.
2. Confirm that the page has been updated or removed, and confirm that the cache & snippet are outdated (do not match the current content).
3. Now, enter a word that no longer appears on the live page, but which is still visible in the cache or snippet. See our previous blog post on removals for more details.

You can find out more about URL removals in our Help Center, as well as in our earlier blog posts on removing URLs & directories, removing & updating cached content, removing content you don't own, and tracking requests + what not to remove.

We hope these changes make it easier for you to submit removal requests! We welcome your feedback in our removals help forum category, where other users may also be able to help with more complicated removal issues.

Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst

Structured Data dashboard: new markup error reports for easier debugging

Since we launched the Structured Data dashboard last year, it has quickly become one of the most popular features in Webmaster Tools. We’ve been working to expand it and make it even easier to debug issues so that you can see how Google understands the marked-up content on your site.

Starting today, you can see items with errors in the Structured Data dashboard. This new feature is a result of a collaboration with webmasters, whom we invited in June to>register as early testers of markup error reporting in Webmaster Tools. We’ve incorporated their feedback to improve the functionality of the Structured Data dashboard.

An “item” here represents one top-level structured data element (nested items are not counted) tagged in the HTML code. They are grouped by data type and ordered by number of errors:

We’ve added a separate scale for the errors on the right side of the graph in the dashboard, so you can compare items and errors over time. This can be useful to spot connections between changes you may have made on your site and markup errors that are appearing (or disappearing!).

Our data pipelines have also been updated for more comprehensive reporting, so you may initially see fewer data points in the chronological graph.

How to debug markup implementation errors

1. To investigate an issue with a specific content type, click on it and we’ll show you the markup errors we’ve found for that type. You can see all of them at once, or filter by error type using the tabs at the top:



2. Check to see if the markup meets the implementation guidelines for each content type. In our example case (events markup), some of the items are missing a startDate or name property. We also surface missing properties for nested content types (e.g. a review item inside a product item) — in this case, this is the lowprice property.
3. Click on URLs in the table to see details about what markup we’ve detected when we crawled the page last and what’s missing. You’ll can also use the “Test live data” button to test your markup in the Structured Data Testing Tool. Often when checking a bunch of URLs, you’re likely to spot a common issue that you can solve with a single change (e.g. by adjusting a setting or template in your content management system).



4. Fix the issues and test the new implementation in the Structured Data Testing Tool. After the pages are recrawled and reprocessed, the changes will be reflected in the Structured Data dashboard.

We hope this new feature helps you manage the structured data markup on your site better. We will continue to add more error types in the coming months. Meanwhile, we look forward to your comments and questions here or in the dedicated Structured Data section of the Webmaster Help forum.

Posted by Mariya Moeva, Webmaster Trends Analyst

Checklist and videos for mobile website improvement

Webmaster Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Unsure where to begin improving your smartphone website? Wondering how to prioritize all the advice? We just published a checklist to help provide an efficient approach to mobile website improvement. Several topics in the checklist link to a relevant business case or study, other topics include a video explaining how to make data from Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools actionable during the improvement process. Copied below are shortened sections of the full checklist. Please let us know if there’s more you’d like to see, or if you have additional topics for us to include.

Step 1: Stop frustrating your customers

• Remove cumbersome extra windows from all mobile user-agents | Google recommendation, Article
  • JavaScript pop-ups that can be difficult to close.
  • Overlays, especially to download apps (instead consider a banner such as iOS 6+ Smart App Banners or equivalent, side navigation, email marketing, etc.).
  • Survey requests prior to task completion.


• Provide device-appropriate functionality
  • Remove features that require plugins or videos not available on a user's device (e.g., Adobe Flash isn't playable on an iPhone or on Android versions 4.1 and higher). | Business case
  • Serve tablet users the desktop version (or if available, the tablet version). | Study
  • Check that full desktop experience is accessible on mobile phones, and if selected, remains in full desktop version for duration of the session (i.e., user isn't required to select "desktop version" after every page load). | Study


• Correct high traffic, poor user-experience mobile pages
  
  
  
  How to correct high-traffic, poor user-experience mobile pages with data from Google Analytics bounce rate and events (slides)


• Make quick fixes in performance (and continue if behind competition) | Business case



How to make quick fixes in mobile site performance and compare your site to the competition (slides)

To see all topics in “Stop frustrating your customers,” please see the full Checklist for mobile website improvement.

Step 2: Facilitate task completion

• Optimize crawling, indexing, and the searcher experience | Business case
  
  • Unblock resources (CSS, JavaScript) that are robots.txt disallowed.
  • Implement search-engine best practices given your mobile implementation:
    • Responsive design: Be sure to include CSS @media query.
    • Separate mobile site: Add rel=alternate media and rel=canonical, as well as Vary: User-Agent HTTP Header which helps Google implement Skip Redirect.
    • Dynamic serving: Include Vary: User-Agent HTTP header.
  
  
• Optimize popular mobile persona workflows for your site
  
  
  How to optimize popular mobile workflows using Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics (slides)

Step Three: Convert customers into fans!

• Consider search integration points with mobile apps | Announcement, Information


• Brainstorm new ways to provide value
  • Build for mobile behavior, such as the in-store shopper. | Business case
  • Leverage smartphone GPS, camera, accelerometer.
  • Increase sharing or social behavior. | Business case
  • Consider intuitive/fun tactile functionality with swiping, shaking, tapping.

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead

Video: Creating a SEO strategy (with Webmaster Tools!)

Webmaster Level: Intermediate

Wondering how to begin creating an organic search strategy at your company? What’s a good way to integrate your company’s various online components, such as the website, blog, or YouTube channel? Perhaps we can help! In under fifteen minutes, I outline a strategic approach to SEO for a mock company, Webmaster Central, where I pretend to be the SEO managing the Webmaster Central Blog.

Fifteen-minute video to help your create the SEO strategy at your company

The video covers these high-level topics (and you can skip to the exact portion of the video that might be of interest):

Creating a SEO strategy

• Using Webmaster Central as mock company
• Building an SEO strategy
1. Understand searcher persona workflow
2. Determine company and website goals
3. Audit your site to best reach your audience
4. Execute and make improvements
• Overcoming obstacles

Feel free to reference the slides as well.

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead

Video: Expanding your site to more languages

Webmaster Level: Intermediate to Advanced

We filmed a video providing more details about expanding your site to more languages or country-based language variations. The video covers details about rel=”alternate” hreflang and potential implementation on your multilingual and/or multinational site.

Video and slides on expanding your site to more languages

You can watch the entire video or skip to the relevant sections:

• Potential search issues with international sites
• Questions to ask within your company before beginning international expansion
• International site use cases
• rel=”alternate” hreflang and hreflang=”x-default”: details and implementation
• Best practices

Additional resources on hreflang include:

• Webmaster Help Center article on rel=”alternate” hreflang and hreflang=”x-default”
• More blog posts
• Working with multilingual sites
• Working with multiregional sites
• New markup for multilingual content
• Introducing "x-default hreflang” for international landing pages"
• Webmaster discussion forum FAQ on internationalization
• Webmaster discussion forum for internationalization (review answers or post your own question!)

Good luck as you expand your site to more languages!

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead

Better backlink data for site owners

Webmaster level: intermediate

In recent years, our free Webmaster Tools product has provided roughly 100,000 backlinks when you click the "Download more sample links" button. Until now, we've selected those links primarily by lexicographical order. That meant that for some sites, you didn't get as complete of a picture of the site's backlinks because the link data skewed toward the beginning of the alphabet.

Based on feedback from the webmaster community, we're improving how we select these backlinks to give sites a fuller picture of their backlink profile. The most significant improvement you'll see is that most of the links are now sampled uniformly from the full spectrum of backlinks rather than alphabetically. You're also more likely to get example links from different top-level domains (TLDs) as well as from different domain names. The new links you see will still be sorted alphabetically.

Starting soon, when you download your data, you'll notice a much broader, more diverse cross-section of links. Site owners looking for insights into who recommends their content will now have a better overview of those links, and those working on cleaning up any bad linking practices will find it easier to see where to spend their time and effort.

Thanks for the feedback, and we'll keep working to provide helpful data and resources in Webmaster Tools. As always, please ask in our forums if you have any questions.

Posted by Yinnon Haviv, Software Engineer, Webmaster Tools Team

rel=”author” frequently asked (advanced) questions

Webmaster Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Using authorship helps searchers discover great information by highlighting content from authors who they might find interesting. If you’re an author, signing up for authorship will help users recognize content that you’ve written. Additionally, searchers can click the byline to see more articles you’ve authored or to follow you on Google+. It’s that simple! Well, except for several advanced questions that we’d like to help answer...

Authorship featured in search results from one of my favorite authors, John Mueller


Clicking the author’s byline in search results can reveal more articles and a Google+ profile

Recent authorship questions

1. What kind of pages can be used with authorship?

Good question! You can increase the likelihood that we show authorship for your site by only using authorship markup on pages that meet these criteria:

• The URL/page contains a single article (or subsequent versions of the article) or single piece of content, by the same author. This means that the page isn’t a list of articles or an updating feed. If the author frequently switches on the page, then the annotation is no longer helpful to searchers and is less likely to be featured.
• The URL/page consists primarily of content written by the author.
• Showing a clear byline on the page, stating the author wrote the article and using the same name as used on their Google+ profile.

2. Can I use a company mascot as an author and have authorship annotation in search results? For my pest control business, I’d like to write as the “Pied Piper.”

You’re free to write articles in the manner you prefer -- your users may really like the Pied Piper idea. However, for authorship annotation in search results, Google prefers to feature a human who wrote the content. By doing so, authorship annotation better indicates that a search result is the perspective of a person, and this helps add credibility for searchers.

Again, because currently we want to feature people, link authorship markup to an individual’s profile rather than linking to a company’s Google+ Page.

3. If I use authorship on articles available in different languages, such as
example.com/en/article1.html for English and
example.com/fr/article1.html for the French translation,
should I link to two separate author/Google+ profiles written in each language?

In your scenario, both articles:
example.com/en/article1.html
and
example.com/fr/article1.html
should link to the same Google+ profile in the author’s language of choice.

4. Is it possible to add two authors for one article?

In the current search user interface, we only support one author per article, blog post, etc. We’re still experimenting to find the optimal outcome for searchers when more than one author is specified.

5. How can I prevent Google from showing authorship?

The fastest way to prevent authorship annotation is to make the author’s Google+ profile not discoverable in search results. Otherwise, if you still want to keep your profile in search results, then you can remove any profile or contributor links to the website, or remove the markup so that it no longer connects with your profile.

6. What’s the difference between rel=author vs rel=publisher?

rel=publisher helps a business create a shared identity by linking the business’ website (often from the homepage) to the business’ Google+ Page. rel=author helps individuals (authors!) associate their individual articles from a URL or website to their Google+ profile. While rel=author and rel=publisher are both link relationships, they’re actually completely independent of one another.

7. Can I use authorship on my site’s property listings or product pages since one of my employees has customized the description?

Authorship annotation is useful to searchers because it signals that a page conveys a real person’s perspective or analysis on a topic. Since property listings and product pages are less perspective/analysis oriented, we discourage using authorship in these cases. However, an article about products that provides helpful commentary, such as, “Camera X vs. Camera Y: Faceoff in the Arizona Desert” could have authorship.

If you have additional questions, don’t forget to check out (and even post your question if you don’t see it covered :) in the Webmaster Forum.

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead

Making smartphone sites load fast

Webmaster level: Intermediate

Users tell us they use smartphones to search online because it’s quick and convenient, but today’s average mobile page typically takes more than 7 seconds to load. Wouldn’t it be great if mobile pages loaded in under one second? Today we’re announcing new guidelines and an updated PageSpeed Insights tool to help webmasters optimize their mobile pages for best rendering performance.

Prioritizing above-the-fold content

Research shows that users’ flow is interrupted if pages take longer than one second to load. To deliver the best experience and keep the visitor engaged, our guidelines focus on rendering some content, known as the above-the-fold content, to users in one second (or less!) while the rest of the page continues to load and render in the background. The above-the-fold HTML, CSS, and JS is known as the critical rendering path.

We can achieve sub-second rendering of the above-the-fold content on mobile networks by applying the following best practices:

• Server must render the response (< 200 ms)
• Number of redirects should be minimized
• Number of roundtrips to first render should be minimized
• Avoid external blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
• Reserve time for browser layout and rendering (200 ms)
• Optimize JavaScript execution and rendering time

These are explained in more details in the mobile-specific help pages, and, when you’re ready, you can test your pages and the improvements you make using the PageSpeed Insights
tool.

As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please post in our discussion group.

Posted by Bryan McQuade, Software Engineer, and Pierre Far, Webmaster Trends Analyst

View manual webspam actions in Webmaster Tools

Webmaster level: All

We strive to keep spam out of our users’ search results. This includes both improving our webspam algorithms as well as taking manual action for violations of our quality guidelines. Many webmasters want to see if their sites are affected by a manual webspam action, so today we’re introducing a new feature that should help. The manual action viewer in Webmaster Tools shows information about actions taken by the manual webspam team that directly affect that site’s ranking in Google’s web search results. To try it out, go to Webmaster Tools and click on the “Manual Actions” link under “Search Traffic."

You’ll probably see a message that says, “No manual webspam actions found.” A recent analysis of our index showed that well under 2% of domains we've seen are manually removed for webspam. If you see this message, then your site doesn't have a manual removal or direct demotion for webspam reasons.

If your site is in the very small fraction that do have a manual spam action, chances are we’ve already notified you in Webmaster Tools. We’ll keep sending those notifications, but now you can also do a live check against our internal webspam systems. Here’s what it would look like if Google had taken manual action on a specific section of a site for "User-generated spam":

In this hypothetical example, there isn’t a site-wide match, but there is a “partial match." A partial match means the action applies only to a specific section of a site. In this case, the webmaster has a problem with other people leaving spam on mattcutts.com/forum/. By fixing this common issue, the webmaster can not only help restore his forum's rankings on Google, but also improve the experience for his users. Clicking the "Learn more" link will offer new resources for troubleshooting.

Once you’ve corrected any violations of Google’s quality guidelines, the next step is to request reconsideration. With this new feature, you'll find a simpler and more streamlined reconsideration request process. Now, when you visit the reconsideration request page, you’ll be able to check your site for manual actions, and then request reconsideration only if there’s a manual action applied to your site. If you do have a webspam issue to address, you can do so directly from the Manual Actions page by clicking "Request a review."

The manual action viewer delivers on a popular feature request. We hope it reassures the vast majority of webmasters who have nothing to worry about. For the small number of people who have real webspam issues to address, we hope this new information helps speed up the troubleshooting. If you have questions, come find us in the Webmaster Help Forum or stop by our Office Hours.

Update (12:50pm PT, August 9th): Unfortunately we've hit a snag during our feature deployment, so it will be another couple days before the feature is available to everyone. We will post another update once the feature is fully rolled out.

Update (10:30am PT, August 12th): The feature is now fully rolled out.

Posted by Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer

In-depth articles in search results

Webmaster level: all

Users often turn to Google to answer a quick question, but research suggests that up to 10% of users’ daily information needs involve learning about a broad topic. That’s why today we’re introducing new search results to help users find in-depth articles.

These results are ranked algorithmically based on many signals that look for high-quality, in-depth content. You can help our algorithms understand your pages better by following these recommendations:

• use schema.org “article” markup,
  
• provide authorship markup,
  
• rel=next and rel=prev for paginated articles (also watch out for common rel=canonical mistakes),
  
• provide information about your organization’s logo,
  
• and of course, create compelling in-depth content.
  

Following these best practices along with our webmaster guidelines helps our systems to better understand your website’s content, and improves the chances of it appearing in this new set of search results.

The in-depth articles feature is rolling out now on google.com in English. For more information, check out our help center article, and feel free to post in the comments in our forums.

Posted by Pandu Nayak, Member of Technical Staff

A reminder about manipulative or deceptive behavior

Webmaster level: All

Our quality guidelines prohibit manipulative or deceptive behavior, and this stance has remained unchanged since the guidelines were first published over a decade ago. Recently, we’ve seen some user complaints about a deceptive technique which inserts new pages into users’ browsing histories. When users click the "back" button on their browser, they land on a new page that they've never visited before. Users coming from a search results page may think that they’re going back to their search results. Instead, they’re taken to a page that looks similar, but is actually entirely advertisements:

To protect our users, we may take action on, including removal of, sites which violate our quality guidelines, including for inserting deceptive or manipulative pages into a user's browser history. As always, if you believe your site has been impacted by a manual spam action and is no longer violating our guidelines, you can let us know by requesting reconsideration.

Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team

Easier navigation without GPS

Webmaster level: All

Today we’re unveiling a shiny new navigation in Webmaster Tools. The update will make the features you already use easier to find, as well as unveil some exciting additions.

Navigation reflects how search works

We’ve organized the Webmaster Tools features in groups that match the stages of search:

• Crawl: see information about how we discover and crawl your content. Here you will find crawl stats, crawl errors, any URLs you’ve blocked from crawling, Sitemaps, URL parameters, and the Fetch as Google feature.
  
• Google Index: keep track of how many of your pages are in Google’s index and how we understand their content: you can monitor the overall indexed counts for your site (Index Status), see what keywords we’ve found on your pages (Content Keywords), or request to remove URLs from the search results.
• Search Traffic: check how your pages are doing in the search results — how people find your site (Search Queries), who’s recommended your site (Links to Your Site), and see a sample of pages from your site that have incoming links from other internal pages.
• Search Appearance: mark up your pages to help Google understand your content better during indexing and potentially influence how your pages appear in our search results. This includes the Structured Data dashboard, Data Highlighter, Sitelinks, and HTML Improvements.

Account-level administrative tasks now accessible from the Settings menu

Account-level admin tasks such as setting User permissions, Site Settings, and Change of Address are now grouped under the gear icon in the top right corner so they’re always accessible to you:

This is the list of items as visible to site owners, “full” or “restricted” users will see a subset of these options. For example, if you're a “restricted” user for a site, the "Users & Site Owners" menu item will not appear.

New Search Appearance pop-up

Beginner webmasters will appreciate the new Search Appearance pop-up, which can be used to visualize how your site may appear in search and learn more about the content or structure changes that may help to influence each element:

To access the pop-up window, click on the question mark icon next to the Search Appearance menu in the side navigation.

It includes the essential search result elements like title, snippet and URL, as well as optional elements such as sitelinks, breadcrumbs, search within a site, event and product rich snippets, and authorship information.

We hope the new navigation makes it easier for you to make the most of Webmaster Tools. As always, if you have additional questions, feel free to post in the Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by Mariya Moeva, Webmaster Trends Analyst