The plugin can generate both comprehensive sitemaps of all URLs seen in server traffic and sitemaps dedicated to store URLs that have changed recently.

“Having both comprehensive and delta Sitemaps provides you with significant benefits, as you will always have a full, up-to-date list of all URLs on your website that search engines can use for deep crawl, as well as a concise Sitemap of URLs that were modified recently, which search engine crawlers can prioritize,” says Bing’s Duane Forrester. “This can help in keeping bot traffic bandwidth down. In addition, the Sitemap Plugin automatically adds <lastmod> values to your Sitemap, and generates <priority> values to the Sitemap based on how popular your URLs are.”

“SEO is a complex and ever changing area but there are some key elements that are still as relevant now as they were a few years ago,” he says. “One of them is building high-quality XML Sitemaps, a comprehensive and accurate representation of your website. That way, you keep control of what you want search engines to index in order of priority and you inform them of new or updated content on your website.”

More on the plugin here. It can be downloaded here.

Google announced today that Webmasters can now see up to 90 days of search query historical data. The previous limit was set to only 35 days, so that’s a huge jump in data. It should give Webmasters a better idea of how their Website has been doing over the past few months instead of just the last month.

You can go back to the full 90 days by using the same date picker you’ve always used to see search query data in between particular dates. Here’s what a full 90 days of search data looks like:

As always, there is a catch though. You can’t view 90 days worth of search data if you want to see changes with the previous time period. Changes are only available with 30 days of search data. Changes are also turned off by default, but you can turn them on with a button between the graph and the table.

There are a few other changes being made to Webmaster Tools. One of them is that users can now view basic search data as soon as site ownership is verified. The other change is that Google now collects the top 2,000 queries that your site gets clicks for. They feel that 98 percent of sites will have full coverage in this regard, but a few Webmasters may see less than 2,000 results.

The tips featured below are all about making sure search engines understand the new site structure if you happen to move, but it also has the benefit of making the Web site more user friendly. SEO and user friendliness go hand-in-hand.

One of the first things to do is make sure you’re redirecting all bots and users visiting your old cotent to the new content using 301 redirects. It’s also important to highlight the “relationship between the two locations, make sure that each old URL points to the new URL that hosts similar content.” If you can’t use 301 redirects, Google recommends using cross domain canonicals.

For SEO purposes, make sure you have the new old and location for your Web site verified in the same Google Webmaster Tools account. On a similar note, make sure the new location can be crawled by using the Fetch as Googlebot feature. Even though Google is discontinuing the robots.txt feature, old URLs may still implement it. Get rid of it so that the redirect can be found.

Just as you would in the real world, the virtual world requires a change of address submission form when moving to an entirely new domain. Google has a handy form available in their Webmaster Tools that lets them know about the move.

A move to a new site always runs the risk of your the user running into the 404 errors. That’s no good and it’s a major deterrent to people wanting to visit your site again. To combat this problem, Google provides a Diagnostics tool that looks for Crawl errors.

Checking and verifying your Sitemap might seem like common sense, but it’s still important. To that end, catalog the instances whenever a user hits a 404 error page. Find the offending URL and update your 301 redirect rules to deal with the problem.

Google Webmaster Tools offers a Links to your site tool that tells you which important sites link to your content. Inform these sites about your move so they can update their links accordingly.

Google Webmaster Tools are also there to help if your Web site is meant to target a specific geographic region. Check out the geotargeting preferences for your new site structure. It’s also important to note that you shouldn’t run two crawlable sites with largely similar content.

As a final suggestion, take it easy during the move. Don’t make a lot of big changes at once. This means no changes to “large scale content, URL structure or navigational updates.” Not only does it confuse the user trying to get to your site, but it throws search engines for a loop.

With the helpful tips, it shouldn’t be a problem when it comes time to move your Web site. You can still retain your valuable SEO and keep users happy.

Google’s Matt Cutts explained these concepts in a video made last August. Check it out:

The first tool to get the boot is the Subscriber stats feature. The reported “the number of subscribers to a site’s RSS or Atom feeds.” Google already has the same features included in their Feedburner tool so they suggest users of the current Subscriber stats feature switch to that.

The second removal is for the Create robots.txt tool. This allowed Web sites to generate a robots.txt file that would block a section of a Web site from being crawled by the Googlebot. The reason for removal is that it got very little use. Google says that those people who did use the feature can easily create their own since there are a multitude of other services that create robots.txt files.

The last feature hitting the cutting block is the Site performance feature that’s part of the Webmaster Tools Lab. It let Webmasters check out the average load time of a site’s pages. The reason for its removal is the same as the last – low usage. If you need to check your site’s performance, Google provides the same features in the Site Speed feature in Google Analytics or Google’s PageSpeed tool.

As you can see, these removals are more about removing redundancy than any kind of breaking changes. The retiring of these features only means that Webmasters have to switch to one of the many other options available. Chances are you’re already using one of those alternative options. If you are still using one of the above features, you have two weeks to say your goodbyes.

Google has been seen saying following words about participating in the link schemes:

“…there are some webmasters who get involved in link exchange programs and other build partner pages just for the purpose of cross linking and disregarding the quality of links. This leaves a long term impact on their sites. But the strategy totally violate the set guidelines of Google Webmaster and can also have negative affect on search engine ranking results..”

When the Google is seen stating this, Microsoft is not left supporting its competitor:

“…use of techniques like Live Search index might affect the ranking of your website or even get your website removed from the search index. Settling down for link farms techniques can artificially increase the number of links to the webpage, but it is not genuine…”

Yahoo also believes that sites those are cross linked excessively are consider unwanted and thus, face lack of ranking problems.

Now the question arises, why would Skip Chilcott publicly recommend Link exchange scheme that is a semi black hat technique? Along with this, he would also endorse certain firms/ softwares to help you with adopting link exchange scheme.

Why Should we Discourage Link Exchange Schemes?

We have seen search engines becoming more competitive as well as useful for SEOs and even common researchers. All of us depend on these search engines to find relevant information. The reason why search engines have gained so much credibility is because they offer maximum information in quickly. As so many people have started gaming the search engines, this is resulting in more spam and less quality results. In order to stop receiving spam, we have to ensure that attributed like low quality links should not be taken into consideration by search engines. Google is one of the preferred search engines, which has not only discounted the bad links from counting but has also taken strict actions in order to prevent webmasters from googling the search ranking with shady SEO techniques.

It is true that reciprocal linking or participation in automated link exchange program however does not completely benefit users. These are only beneficial for the webmasters who game the whole system. And if despite of abiding to some strict rules, search engines are still gamed, they will lose their usefulness.

When a top notch employee of Microsoft gives a shady advice like semi black hat SEO, it clarifies the doubt that why Live search has yet not been successful in producing good results.

After identifying the mistake made by him in first post, Skip Chilcott came out with another post. For this, he took advice from colleagues over at Live Search. He made them share some expert advice about linking best practices.

Possible White Hat, which are Link Exchange

• The links that assist users in finding more relevant information about particular subject.
• Links, which are not meant for promotion or do not give link juice to a site that has spammy nature.
• Links that are meant for traffic and not at all for better search engine ranking.
• Links that you would also recommend to search engines due to the quality and highly informative details they offer.

There are some natural link building techniques referred by many Search Experts. These are:

• Should I Avoid Link Exchange / Link Trading Hubs? by Aaron Wall of SEObook.com
• 8 Ways to Buy Links without Buying Links written by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org
• 101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website written by Aaron Wall working for SEOBook.com
• The definitive link building strategy offered by Web Credible
• Five Link Building Strategies That Work by Brian Clark of Copyblogger
• Link Building Tutorial – A Complete Walkthrough written by Saad Kamal

Comments

Searchers despise the 404 error page, especially when it comes from clicking what looks like a relevant link in a list of search results. Too often, these 404s come up as an ineffective default page in the browser, leaving the visitor no other real choice but to hit the Back button and try again.

One may end up leery of future results from that domain, a brutal blow to a webmaster who may not realize without carefully checking the log files that people are hitting and missing something on their sites.

The biggest search engine, Google, prefers not to see this. It not only diminishes the value of the destination sites returning a 404 error, but the quality of its search results. A poorly configured delivery of 404 results may keep an otherwise dead page alive in Google’s index, to be found again and again.

It’s basic stuff, as commenters on the first of a short series of posts at the Google Webmaster Central blog noted. Is someone really a webmaster if they don’t know to return a 404 error when a page is not found?

Not all 404s are created equal, as Maile Ohye said at the blog today. A 404 could be a soft error or a hard one.

The soft 404 response is the undesirable result. This happens when someone tries to visit a nonexistent URL on a site. Instead of an error page, the website returns a 200 response code and sends the request to the site’s homepage.

On the user’s side, the person who encountered this probably questioned the sanity of the webmaster on the other end who let this useless result happen. It’s not a good way to earn repeat visits.

Give the visitor a real 404 page not found result, Ohye said. It’s a clear indication both to human and automated visitors about the status of the page.

Google plans to make a week of the 404, and we’ve got a pretty good idea of where they are going judging by Ohye’s comment about sending a helpful “Not found” message to the viewer. Webmasters have the ability to deliver any kind of page in response to a 404 situation.

Such a page could let the visitor know that, while the page they wanted isn’t there, other pages on the site may be exactly what they need. Weather.com demonstrates this well: this link brings up two types of content.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/the-joy-of-404-ing-2008-08/feed 3 http://www.webpronews.com/microsoft-wields-updated-webmaster-tools-2008-08 http://www.webpronews.com/microsoft-wields-updated-webmaster-tools-2008-08#comments Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:04:43 +0000 WebProNews Staff http://www.webpronews.com/?p=46536 Microsoft’s Live Search behavior should yield more information to site publishers as the company took its Webmaster Tools out of beta and tweaked them with some new features.

Addressing the needs of webmasters, and doing it well, will contribute to the overall success of Microsoft’s desires for Internet profitability. The company wants to compete with Google on search advertising, no small challenge now that Google has Yahoo locked up with a deal to place ads on Yahoo Search.

Things can change, and they do so by being responsive to the needs of one’s customers. Microsoft recognized its need to reach webmasters with tools that make working with Microsoft’s Live Search a better prospect.

It’s taken Microsoft some time to ramp up and chase after Google, which published its Webmaster Central some time ago. Google tends to update that service regularly, and Microsoft followed suit with updates to its version of webmaster assistance.

Microsoft’s Webmaster Tools present ways for people to reach out for more traffic and analyze it once they have arrived. An update noted on the Live Search Webmaster Center blog showed it leaving beta, bringing along some updated tools as well.

Webmasters need to know how well Live Search crawls their site. Microsoft hopes to shed some light on this by presenting “crawl issues” encountered during the spidering process. The feature shows which of four types of issues the Live Search crawler encountered:

• File Not Found (404)

• Blocked by REP
• Long Dynamic URLs
• Unsupported Content-Types

As grizzled webmasters can see, Microsoft is just starting to catch up with Google in this regard.

Microsoft also said they enhanced the tool that gives details on the backlink data for sites. A limited look at that information during the beta period for Webmaster Tools expanded to show more data about those backlinks.

Additional tweaks gave webmasters more options to filter data, and a download option to pull that data to the desktop in comma-delimited (CSV) format. It’s a small step for Microsoft, one that the corporate masters overseeing the effort need to watch closely and ensure it receives continual updating to satisfy webmasters who are used to what Google provides.

Rich Page touted a quintet of useful analytics tools that should complement what webmasters run today. His Web Analytics World post kicked off with an alternative to the popular Google Analytics package that the search engine makes available at no cost.

He suggested the relatively new Woopra for consideration.  Page liked the real-time visitor analysis feature, and the ability to pop up a chat window with a visitor to help them or solicit feedback.

Webmasters can view overlays of site activity with Crazy Egg, which can reveal where people click on a site. Places that show up as not being clicked often present themselves in this view, making it easy to see what needs work.

Page also recommended Enquisite for reporting on search activity, 4Q for surveys to pull in feedback from visitors, and ClickTale for greater visibility into visitor activity, a la Crazy Egg.

One webmaster who believes he has suffered at the hands of such "Googlebowling" tactics isn’t convinced that Google looks closely enough at potential abuse coming from specially crafted inbound links.

At Search Engine Roundtable, the assertion exists that a little sneakiness by a webmaster will be the only item needed to build and target a rival, and drop it from Google’s rankings. A post at Google Groups detailed how the targeted webmaster would experience such a sudden loss:

Create a bunch of links pointing toward of all your enemies and competitors’ websites then use some really nasty porn Anchor text Keywords. Don’t link the porn keywords to the site’s main or index page, DO link the porn to a single specific page on the site and use that same page as the only page to link the porn too. Googlebowling works better if you embed the links into a video or flash (please note the example).

A Google staffer followed up on the post, claiming the site targeted by the Googlebowling ought to be looked at more closely, and in the context of Google’s quality guildelines.

"Looking at the site that you mentioned, I could imagine that studying our Google Webmaster Guidelines, in particular the quality guidelines, would be time well spent," Google’s John Mueller said.

"Most of these guidelines involve the content on the site itself, something which generally can’t be changed through links pointing to the site."

In a mildly direct way, Mueller suggested the site’s low quality, not the inbound links, needs work. As far as evil linking and site rankings go, Mueller said in a follow-up that in theory the linking cited could cause a problem in some "borderline situations," but still suggested the webmaster in question needs to study Google’s quality guidelines.

Quality guidelines are on the minds of advertisers in particular this month, as Google continues to tweak what it thinks is and is not a quality experience for the arriving visitor. Much has been made of the advertiser side of quality guidelines, but they certainly apply in other ways on Google.

The company’s Maile Ohye talked about serving pages and their indexing by Google’s crawler as part of her post at Google Webmaster Central. The post comes in response to webmasters interested in a discussion of certain webserving techniques.

Webmasters who use geolocation or IP tracking to deliver content based on location need to be careful not to accidentally “cloak” their pages. In cloaking, a site delivers one type of content to the Googlebot crawler, and by extension to people finding the site in Google Search, and much different content to an arriving visitor.

Google doesn’t approve of the practice. “This is a violation of our webmaster guidelines. If the file that Googlebot sees is not identical to the file that a typical user sees, then you’re in a high-risk category,” said Ohye.

Google likes the first-click free approach to web content, just as it does for content showing up in news results. Someone arriving at a page from Google expecting to read a story, and slamming into a login screen instead, won’t care for the experience.

Worse, since Google sent the person to the page in question, the person will more likely blame Google for the poor experience, rather than the cagey webmaster hoping to pull a conversion this way.