Google Increasing Communication with Webmasters - Reactions to the Change
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Before I go into the reactions from webmasters, SEOs, and site owners, let me explain very quickly how to check whether you have a spam penalty, and you own one of the honest websites that Google wants to inform. With Sitemaps, go to your webmaster console, verify a site, then click on the tab labeled "Diagnostic." You will see a page section called "Indexing summary." Matt explained that the specific text would read:
"No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines. Please review our webmaster guidelines and modify your site so that it meets those guidelines. Once your site meets our guidelines, you can request reinclusion and we'll evaluate your site. [?] Submit a reinclusion request."
The words "webmaster guidelines" and "Submit a reinclusion request" are linked to the appropriate pages. The "[?]" is linked to a new help page that answers the question "The summary page says that my site is currently not indexed due to violations to the webmaster guidelines. What does this mean?"
I believe it is very helpful that Google is doing this. However, I want to note that the way the search engine goes about informing webmasters via Sitemaps is a little less helpful than the way it had been informing them via email. You know you have violated the guidelines, and been penalized for it. But you do not know for sure what you did. Assuming the sample email Matt included in his blog in September is any indication, those letters spell out very specifically what and where the problem is, which means it can be fixed quickly. With Sitemaps, while you'll at least know that you did violate the guidelines, you won't necessarily know exactly what you did.
Still, this is progress, as many readers of Matt's blog noted in their comments. Some speculated as to the reason for this change. Craig Wilcox called it great news and noted that "I was just talking last night about how Google might have to disclose a little more about how it ranks sites due to the recent lawsuit from the link farmer." That's KinderStart, in case you hadn't heard. While that's possible, it seems unlikely, given how long this particular change has been in the works.
Another poster heralded the change, explaining that "So often it seems (or feels) like optimizing for Google is a 'webmaster vs. Google' battle. I'm excited to see Google reaching out to webmasters with tools that help us achieve a common goal."
Yet another poster seemed to think that Google hasn't gone far enough. He suggested that Google publish a list of domains that have been banned in their index. He explained that he discovered some time ago that a used domain he had purchased had been banned in Google. "Or maybe Google could re-evaluate old domains to see if the issues on them have been cleared up by new owners?"
Not everyone was pleased by the change. One poster claimed that it was simply an admission "that Google search algorithms are broke!" He went on to state that the problem was Google's Adsense, which he believed encouraged the creation of websites strictly to run Adsense ads. "If Google wants to improve the quality of content on the net, Google should review sites running Adsense and ban crap sites."
Most of the reaction to Google's new openness, however little or much it is, has been positive. Paul Salber probably summed up the sentiments of a lot of people when he called it the first compelling reason to use Google Sitemaps and observed that "This will save hundreds of man-hours and thousands of dollars of lost revenue for legitimate websites." We'll see how well the search engine giant follows through with this.
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