WebProNews

Do Meta Geo Tags Influence Google?

Google's Matt Cutts frequently posts useful tips for webmasters on the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel. The short clips generally offer valuable nuggets of info that can have an impact on your site's performance in Google.

Bing Offers Toolbox for Webmasters, Developers & Advertisers

Microsoft announced the Bing Toolbox today, which is a new portal for webmasters, publishers, developers, and advertisers. Basically it is a resource for finding useful Bing-related tools. Here's the official description: The Toolbox is an organized set of tools for the entire Bing community. It's a one-stop portal to all of the services you need to drive traffic and increase engagement with your site and applications.

Attention Webmasters: Google Sitemaps Updates

Google has been working on updates to how it uses sitemaps. Considering research highlighted in this study (pdf), which showed how search engines find new and changed content faster with sitemaps, webmasters should take note.

How to Avoid Google Penalties with AJAX and display:none

As you may have read about by now, Google's Matt Cutts participated in a fairly lengthy Q&A session at SMX Advanced in Seattle. One interesting question that Matt got was about how webmasters should deal with display:none and AJAX without being penalized by Google. Cutts recommends making sure that whenever you write your own mouseover code that you don't roll your own custom solution, which he says might do some really weird things that nobody else has done before.

Accessibility Information Webmasters Can Use

Web Accessibility organization WebAIM has posted results from an interesting survey on the use of screen readers. Webmasters should pay attention to this, as accessibility is an important part of your online presence, but is often ignored or overlooked. Just ask Target, who settled an accessibility lawsuit last year for $6 million.

Google Introduces New Open Source Sitemap Generator

Google has introduced a new Sitemap Generator for webmasters to help them create better sitemap files. Google had previously introduced one back in 2005, and watched many other people make their own, but this one is different they say.

Google’s Webmaster Help Group Gets New Look

Google said today that it is introducing a new look to its Webmaster Help Group.Specifically Google is giving its English and Polish Help Groups a makeover. It says the new forums will make it easier for users to find answers, share resources with each other and have their participation acknowledged.

Countdown To Google Webmaster Chat

It's almost time for webmasters to glue their ears to a phone once more; Google plans to hold another free live chat this afternoon.

Oops, Google Malware Review Form Working Again

Webmasters this week were greeted with an "oops, not working" error when they tried using Google's Malware Review form. The form that was introduced last year in August to help webmasters solve issues of malware or badware, faced some technical problems this week and this was first reported at around 1 am on May 15th.

Google SERP Changes Result in Traffic Spikes

A huge number of webmasters are reporting a significant increase in traffic. Some even report the hike to be as big as double. All the masters who have been positively affected by the change are delighted. This hike seems to follow a decrease in traffic by half around 20th December 2007. In order to get the correct count some Webmasters have used the site: operator.