All Amazing Articles

Q: I’ve got a question about internationalization: I have a multinational site with country-coded subdirectories and I’ve registered these as such in Webmasters’ tools, will this be exempt from duplicate content rules for a site spanning uk/us/aus ?
A (John Mueller): That’s generally ok. I would still make sure that the pages are obviously well-targeted for those audiences. It wouldn’t make sense to send users from specific areas to one general page. In that case, I would use a single page without geotargeting.

Q: Hi Maile - thought you might be here - remember playing pool against me at the SEOmoz party and getting your ass whooped?!
A (Maile Ohye): The sun was in my eye.

Q: what’s the time now at your location ?
A (Matt Cutts): I have 2:01 p.m. Pacific time, Moh Design

Q: Just Curious - Why does a yellow background occasionally appear in the bottom search box of the SERP?
A (John Mueller): This sounds like a plugin in your browser .

Q: Does Google look negativly on all caps? <–i can spell i swear
A (John Mueller): nope, we take the letters as they come

Q: Q: can Google crawl Flash sites/
A (John Mueller): Somewhat — we can extract some information from the Flash files, but it’s generally not the same as with HTML sites/pages.

Q: Hi Matt, Stephen from Adverted, I;m headed back into China to manage Alibaba, hoping that we can get you and Jainfai over for SMX this next year

A (Matt Cutts): Stephen, my wife is pretty harsh on me traveling these days, but I’d like to get someone from Google out there to present/speak.

Q: I’ve got a question about internationalization: I have a multinational site with country-coded subdirectories and I’ve registered these as such in Webmasters’ tools, will this be exempt from duplicate content rules for a site spanning uk/us/aus?
A (Susan Moskwa): Geographic targeting doesn’t affect the fact that we only want to show one version of a piece of content in search results; we will still try to filter out duplicates when we serve search results.

Q: The question everyone wants to ask. What is more detail about the Google and Yahoo paid partnership, and what do we need to know?
A (Susan Moskwa): http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/our-agreement-to-provide-ad-technology.html

Q: Is there a limit to the number or % of results from a single site in the Google News home and category pages? Would it perhaps be better for a company to have multiple news sites (different domains) in order to get more links on Google News pages?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Mark, I would recommend taking this question to the Google News Help Group here: http://groups.google.com/group/googlenews-help.

Q: Hi John, I wanted to know more about Google webmaster tools stats.. How can we automate it? Why are there special characters like “[" when we download excel file
A (John Mueller): Hi Ankit, I have a python script on my site at http://johnmu.com/ that will convert those files into more readable ones.

Q: Hi! I'm new to the interactive industry this week. I'm learning about search marketing, specifically keyword search. Any advice you have for a newb in the industry?
A (Susan Moskwa): I'd recommend getting to know some of the popular blogs in the industry and follow a couple that you like. There's a lot of great free information available if you know where to look!

Q: I'm interested in the huge SERP flux I'm experience for my main keyword.
A (Susan Moskwa): I'd start here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444

Q: does Google 'value' a website incorporating a relevant blog and forum
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Paul, I would say that an organic blog or forum definitely adds value to your website by creating a community effect.

Q: How sensitive is Google Local to differences in addresses? Will a difference of a space or a dash create confusion in the matrix?
A (Matt Dougherty): Quentin, your question is probably best answered by the Local experts here: http://local.google.com/support/

Q: If a website's Robots.txt file is goign to a 404 error will it be removed from the index? What if it is missing altogether?
A (Michael Wyszomierski): If there is no robots.txt file Google will assume that there are not any crawling restrictions, as long as there are no other robots directives via meta tags or the x-robots HTTP header directive.

Q: Hi, I am not sure is it good question at this moment, but am i allowed to crowl Google result?
A (Susan Moskwa): Making automated queries to our web search results is against Google's Terms of Service.

Q: In regards to the Flash files, I believe it is possible to create Flash movies with extra accessible content, correct?
A (evan t): We encourage building Flash sites with html accessibility for googlebot to crawl. For more information check out our blog post on flash: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/best-uses-of-flash.html

Q: Does Google differentiate between searches in lower case and searches with proper capitalization?
A (John Mueller): We may take this into account if we can recognize that it is relevant to the query.

Q: Our pages are using mod_rewrite to strip ".html"-- Will Google think of "process" and "process.html" as separate pages?
A (Susan Moskwa): If both URLs serve content, we will interpret them as two separate URLs. If the one redirects to the other (e.g. with a 301 redirect), this will let us know that one is the preferred/permanent URL.

Q: Question: Suppose you rank #1 for inanchor: intitle: and intext: But for just the keyword phrase you?re on second page. Any tips on what to do to get up for just the phrase as well?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Peter, echoing what John just talked about, I'd say making sure your content is useful to users is the best approach.

Q: After a reconsideration request, do you typically notify webmasters that the penalty has been lifted?
A (John Mueller): If you recognize that your ranking / indexing has improved, chances are that it has been accepted. if not, I would recommend posting in the Webmaster Help Groups.

Q: It appears that many (not all) the website in the top 20 are boucing positions all over the place. #7 one minute, #13 the next. But a few websites are not exepriencing this at all
A (Susan Moskwa): Jonathan will do a presentation on this later in this chat.

Q: is an empty robots.txt bad?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hi ralf - an empty robots.txt by default will allow all Internet spiders to crawl through all the pages on your site. If that is not something you want, then consider modifying your robots.txt file to set permissions.

Q: Does Google take anything from links taged nofollow, for example does it read the anchor text and credit that to the destination?
A (Susan Moskwa): No, it basically drops that link from our link graph (it ignores it).

Q: beside content, what are the top 3 things to do to your site to reank high ( short version)
A (Susan Moskwa): http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349

Q: I was getting Google organic traffic until last week and all of a sudden it dropped. Now I don't get any traffic from Google organic except just few. my site still getting indexed
A (Susan Moskwa): http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=8524

Q: Is there any way to speed up the time between selecting a country for targeting and it actually beign updated in the system?
A (John Mueller): We're working on improving the webmaster experience with Webmaster Tools, including speeding up the reaction time for specific features.

Q: Is there a comprehensive list of the <meta> tags that GoogleBot can read somewhere?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Quentin, try this Help Center doc - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812

Q: whats matts cats name?
A (Matt Cutts): I have two cats. One is Emmy (she's a scaredy cat) and the other one is Ozzie. He's a handful.

Q: What about a feedback status on Spam Report? I mean when I report spam site, I immediately get a message that the suggestion will be taked on mind, but nobody let us know when, or if the reported site or submission are right or not.
A (Matt Cutts): Andrea, normally we're able to take a look at the reports pretty quickly. I like the idea of giving a little more feedback though.

Q: How do Google handle microformats? Will I get a better seo if I use them?
A (John Mueller): As far as I know, we mostly use the rel=nofollow microformat. I don't think that we handle other microformats. We will however keep track of what's going on to make sure not to miss anything

Q: Where is the best place to see what keywords people are typing in ?
A (Susan Moskwa): This tool gives feedback based on user queries: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Q: Is this an unfair "algo". Just to clarify, the website that were escaping the flux were at #1 and #3, the #2 spot bouncing like a tennis ball.
A (John Mueller): We are constantly working on our algorithms and changes can and will take place over time.

Q: And a follow-up to anybody, do you count links from papers indexed by Google Academic, or Google books?
A (Matt Cutts): Morris, I don't think that we count publications from Google Scholar in our backlinks right now unless we already found the document on the web anyway as if it were a regular web page.

Q: Is there any limit on the number of redirections 301, a Web site?. In a large site, if you change the URL structure, is the optimum time to do it with 301? or is best done gradually
A (Matt Cutts): There's no per-page limit on the number of 301s you can do, so you could move 100K pages to 100K new location. However, if we see a really long chain of redirects, eventually we will decide to stop following the chain.

Q: Do 301 redirects send PR to its destination? I have several domains that 301 to 1 domain, and a couple have PR. Will it now send that PR to the 1 domain now that it is 301 redirected? Thank you.
A (Susan Moskwa): 301 redirects are the best way to let us know that you'd like a particular URL to get "credit" for factors from another URL; we'll pass those signals across a 301 redirect as appropriate.

Q: I've got 3 cats,.. cindy, caty and penelopy..
A (John Mueller): cute

Q: Does Analytics incorporate Google Maps/Local traffic within the organic traffic or does something additional need to be set up?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Russ, I'd suggest asking this in the Analytics Help Group here: http://groups.google.com/group/analytics-help. There are definitely experts on the topic there.

Q: Matt, I was going to ask you about your cat - I've got two Persians - is that cat grooming tool you posted on your blog as good as you make out?!
A (Matt Cutts): Pete, I wouldn't recommend the tool unless I thought it was really good. I think it would work well for Persian cats, esp. because they have very long hair.

Q: if the site is designed with css, does the crawler throw out the .css and look only at the HTML?
A (Matt Cutts): Typically we wouldn't crawl CSS, Kien, but in a few limited circumstances we can (e.g. if we're checking for hidden text).

Q: Further on Geotargetting. I run a multinational site with about 12 different languages being supported. We are implimenting geotrageting so users are directed to the appropriate language page for their country. The concern of some is that Google may penal
A (John Mueller): I would recommend not redirecting users based on their location. This can be a bad user experience. It's better to allow a user to choose his version based on his searches.

Q: What is the explanation for Google finding and registering a site and then having it disappear completely a few days later? They don't recognize that they registered it at all?
A (Susan Moskwa): By "registering" do you mean "indexing"? Sometimes a site may fall in and out of the index when it's very new, but this usually stabilizes after awhile. I'd give it some time.

Q: Is Google hiring in Florida?
A (Bergy Berghausen): unfortunately, we're from Webmaster Support, not hr. Check http://www.google.com/jobs

Q: does Google work with any seo companies?
A (Matt Cutts): Brian, I don't believe that we recommend any specific SEO companies. What we typically do instead is try to work with as many users/webmasters/site owners/SEOs as we can, e.g. by going to conferences, via chats like this, and on the webmaster discuss grp.

Q: if there is code commented that contains keyword phrases, is that seen by Google as spamming/spoofing?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Gregory, commented code is ignored by robots, therefore it will have no influence in anything

Q: I have a competitor who is using cloaking to to cover up site design and a client linking directory. Is there anything we can do to inform Google of this?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Matthew! You can submit a spam report from within your Webmaster Tools account to report a site which you think displays spammy behaviors

Q: how do you define and penalize duplicate content? are syndication deals excluded?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Seth, we just did a post on duplicate content on the Google Webmaster Central blog which has a lot of useful information that may be helpful for you

Q: Can you explain the efficacy of the Link: operator in regard to it's "accuracy" ?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi again Quentin, The link: operator is only intended to give you a sample of your backlinks. Logging into Webmaster Tools will give you a more comprehensive list.

Q: @Matt Cutts. Is quoting, or "block" quoting for this matter considered as duplicate content? Does it "hurt" at all? And to what extend it does if it does indeed.
A (Matt Cutts): I would be careful not to "block quote" an entire article and then not add any of your own info (that's essentially spam scraping), but just regular quoting would be fair use and shouldn't cause you any issues.

Q: Has Google started crawling video sitemaps faster than 2-3 months as stated in the last session?
A (John Mueller): I'm not aware of changes in this regard at the moment. However, we're always working on improving our processes.

Q: I Jianfai coming to this event?
A (Adam Lasnik): no, unfortunately not.

Q: I know a blogger spammer that uses my wp themes and turns them into blogger templates without crediting, I tried to connect to the spam office, but no luck
A (Susan Moskwa): You can submit a spam report to let us know about this: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35265 You could also file a DMCA takedown request if they're stealing your content.

Q: To what extent is Google developing LSI in it's search algo?
A (John Mueller): As a webmaster, you generally don't need to worry about details such as that. Writing content for your users is still better than creating content based on artificial metrics.

Q: If a site had a noindex meta tag and was removed from the index, how long before it could come back into the index? Would that removal carry over to another domain if that site was 301'd to a new site?
A (Maile Ohye): Hi Brian, the site (or just one URL) can return to the index once it's recrawled with the noindex tag removed. Also, you can't really noindex a separate domain, even if you 301 (so no mean webmasters can easily exclude your domain from being indexed).

Q: What about a beter improvement of ~ operator? I mean, for english thesaurus it's perfect, but ever you tried to use it in italian? Every suggestion return most of the time a no-sense result.
A (John Mueller): Thanks, I'll pass it on to the appropriate team!

Q: MSN is thinking of having a generic 404 error page option with links from the MSN organic results. How will this affect Google search results?
A (Matt Cutts): Alan, I haven't looked into this myself, but my hope is that MSN would preserve the 404 HTTP status code. Then users can use the page but search engines will still see that the page is 404.

Q: Will we ever have control over sitelinks to bring searchers to the better pages on our site, vs the ones Google thinks are the best pages?
A (evan t): Sitelinks are automatically generated by our algorithm and are meant to help users navigate your site. While you cannot opt into having sitelinks, you are able to block Sitelinks using Google Webmaster Tools.

Q: Matt, what is going on regarding site in frame spam? I mean a kind of directory site with thousands of pages and sells advertising. But shows the site in a huge iframe.
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Peter, if you have noticed behaviour that you think might be spammy, please submit a spam report -- Google does look at all spam reports

Q: my site disapeared for 7 days and came back today. Should I be worried that it might be a warning of a problem
A (John Mueller): It's always good to be on top of changes.If you can't recognize anything, I would recommend posting in Webmaster Help groups.

Q: can you use geotargeting to target a region or a # of countries?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Seth, geotargeting at the moment is only possible to target single countries, no regions are supported at the moment.

Q: what if your URL path is in english and the content of the site is in Spanish, on a .com.mx domain? would it be better to use spanish language in the URL paths?
A (John Mueller): It's best to keep URLs in a way that users can recognize what the content is about.

Q: Matt, How come you don't enter the Crawling, indexing, and ranking forums more often?
A (Matt Cutts): I feel like there are a bunch of Googlers that do that really well, but that's fair feedback. I tend to roam all over the web since I know a bunch of Googlers are already keeping an eye on that forum.

Q: I think my site was hacked through an XSS hole (search functionality). How can I protect that hole in the future?
A (Matt Cutts): http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/check-your-search-box-for-xss-exploits/ talked about this a bit and pointed to a good blog posts.

Q: this is a general question - how is Google dealing with code that is commented out. I am coming across a lot of sites I deal with were a programer will have commented out code instead of removing it - I am wondering if this has a potential adverse effect.
A (John Mueller): We ignore it.

Q: Whats the average time after which a site's PR gets updated? any defined rules for that ?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hi Abhijeet - Google's index is continuously updating itself so there are no defined timeframes when a site's ranking will change

Q: Matt, AZEA uses hidden text with it's image nav links (-999ems indent), is that likely to be regarded as suspicious?
A (evan t): Hi Rich,
A (evan t): We appreciate your assistance in maintaining the quality of our search results.
A (evan t): If you've found a particular site that's spamming our index, you can report it via the "Report spam in our index" link in Webmaster Tools.

Q: if a site had sitelinks, then suddenly lost them, is that a sign of lost trust, links, or something else?
A (evan t): Hi Ben,
A (evan t): Sitelinks, the links shown below some sites in our natural search results, are automatically generated by our algorithm and meant to help users navigate your site.
A (evan t): While you can not opt into having these features shown, if your site does qualify sitelinks, you can block the ones that you do not want shown.
A (evan t): For more advice on optimizing for sitelinks, I would suggest visiting the Webmaster Help Group at http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help. They have loads of experienced webmasters and Googlers providing answers and feedback.

Q: About the robots.txt: I read today a deep post in the net where is specified that whenever gbot is unable to get back result for an existent robots.txt file in a shorten time, Google crawler start to ignore web site page indexing. This sound a bit strange.
A (John Mueller): If we are not sure whether or not we are allowed to crawl a site, we might play it safe and not crawl the site. Of course if the robots.txt is unreachable, chances are the rest of your site might be too (which is bad).

Q: Matt, can you comment on the number of links leading to interior content/category pages, that appear on the index of a site - and the impact of having many internal links on the index or not having that..
A (Maile Ohye): Hi Jeff, by index do you mean Sitemap or index.html type page. In general, if it's index.html (not a Sitemap) then keep is user-friendly and navigatable. We usually say 100 links or fewer. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer

Q: Does Google support or plan to support hCard microformats?
A (John Mueller): I'm not aware of changes in that regard, but we are always open to new ideas!

Q: Will hiding navigation items with css (that are displayed on certain pages/directories) have a negative impact when Google indexes the site?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Jonathan, when building your site and considering hiding navigation elements, it's best to always think, "is this good for my users?" and "would i do this if there were no search engines?

Q: My blog moved to a new domain, but I still have both blogs running with the same content, so that old visitors dont miss my blog.... Is this treated as duplicate content ?
A (John Mueller): I would recommend moving old content to the new blog and using a 301 redirect to move users to the new site. This helps us & users to keep track of things.

Q: How do i get hold of my local Google office, South Africa
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Simon, Unfortunately we don't have local one-to-one support at local offices. If you have a specific question, we recommend posting it in our Help Groups.

Q: Whats the average time after which the PR of a site gets updated?
A (Matt Cutts): We typically do pushes to the toolbar every 3-4 months, so it can take that long between toolbar data pushes.

Q: Is there a way to see search listings from the past? To see how ranked yesterday or the day before for example?
A (John Mueller): Not at the moment, but that's an interesting idea!

Q: What can we do to get the geo-target country correct when ccTLD isn't available and Webmaster Tools declaration (3-4 months ago) did nothing.
A (Matt Cutts): Tim Dineen, I think we offered the feature in the frontend and then started supported it in the backend a little later, but I believe that we handle the geotargeting in the webmaster console pretty quickly these days.

Q: How often are the external links updated in Webmaster Central? I've seen instances of links no longer being reported there, even though they still exist
A (John Mueller): These are updated regularly, though it is impossible to give a hard timeline.

Q: I've been using Google Analytics for a while. Since then, some customers complains about slow access. Could it be related?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hi Juan - if you're experiencing problems with Google Analytics, feel free to check out the Analytics Help Center to troubleshoot: http://www.google.com/analytics/support_overview.html

Q: With the increasing amount of sites using nofollow tags. Is Google looking at those links and taking anything away, like anchor text?
A (John Mueller): We ignore links that have the rel=nofollow microformat.

Q: When is your next PR update scheduled for please?
A (evan t): At this moment we are unable to answer questions about individual sites. We highly encourage directing these questions to our Webmast Help Group which has Googlers and users alike: http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help/

Q: Currently the SiteLinks displayed for my site aren't very helpful for users. Does the design of my site effect how these links are compiled? What can I do to help Google compile better SiteLinks?
A (John Mueller): You can have bad sitelinks removed in your Webmaster Tools account & give general feedback while doing that.

Q: why is search history more secure than things like adsense, Google checkout, adwords, which has to do with real $$$. The $$$ items need secondary passwords
A (John Mueller): I'll pass that on to the appropriate team, Jeremy.

Q: Abhijeet: Is that update period just for the toolbar, or for search results as well? What's the time it takes for page rank changes to affect search results?
A (John Mueller): Our search results are updated all the time! The pagerank in the toolbar however is only updated a few times a year.

Q: How long does it take for 301s and 410s to take effect?
A (Bergy Berghausen): 301s and 410s can't "take effect" until after we've had a chance to crawl them--that's the real variable. After we crawl the URL and get the status code, your removal / move should happen within a short period of time, most typically within a few days.

Q: What about paid links? Does Google really manage to identify paid links?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Mike, yes Google does identify paid links.

Q: I'm thinking about serving up an optimized version of my site for accessiblity reasons (no javascript, high contrast css, reduced usage of forms), would Google be ok if we served them this version?
A (Matt Dougherty): Michael, this sounds reasonable as long as the user doesn' t get something they didn't intend on. There are plenty of sites that link off their flashy home page to an HTML version of their site.

Q: Under webmaster the crawl rate trails by how many days on average?
A (John Mueller): The graph is usually fairly up to date, though the labels might be slightly off to the side.

Q: I have been trying to figure out why Google is showing different search ranking for my website. I see a spike one week and i see drastic fall for my Google organic traffic
A (Matt Cutts): That could be personalized search. It's also the case that our rankings do change naturally as we crawl different docs, too.

Q: Is there a review process related to reviews in personalized search, i have reviewed local businesses then did not see those reviews posted
A (John Mueller): We use data from various sources, but it might take some time for it to propogate to us.

Q: How does Google index reviews (I noticed that when I get a map of a specific business it gives a link to reviews)? Is there a specific microformat that is best?
A (John Mueller): We pull this data from only a few sources, I'm not aware of ways to import it directly from your website.

Q: What reasons may cause Google to ignore a small percentage of pages in a small sitemap (less than 1K pages submitted by Console).
A (Matt Cutts): We do look at the number of links when we decide how much to crawl, so just submitting a sitemap doesn't guarantee crawling.

Q: Stupid Question.. should i submit my site to Google monthly/yearly ( told by seo site to do this)?
A (Matt Cutts): Brian, I wouldn't bother. You can submit it once at at google.com/addurl.html

Q: Any comments on the seomoz article "why apple isn't UK enough for google?" Any other tips/tricks about UK sites which are physically hosted in the USA and not on a .co.uk?
A (evan t): Great question. In Webmaster Tools you can set geotargeting. For more information please see: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/where-in-world-is-your-site.html

Q: If a client uses the no cache to stop old pages with different prices to be shown as a cache result, what are some of the problems with this?
A (Matt Cutts): I wouldn't expect this to be a big problem. Plenty of sites don't want to show a cached link for various reasons.

Q: How does personalized search effect businesses who are naturally optimizing their site?
A (John Mueller): If your website is optimized and being well-received by users, this will generally be mirrored in each user's search results.

Q: Where does Google stand on Sub-domain spam/doorway pages right now? In some verticals, sub-domain dw pages are more than 50% top 10 serps.
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hi Brian - just caught your question. Google still considers doorway pages and obviously webspam as violation of our Webmaster Guidelines.
A (Reid Yokoyama): If you see spam in our search results, feel free to submit a spam report to us at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport

Q: Is there any truth in the rumour that, to get around people buying links to boost PR, Google will start valuing links based on the number of people actually clicking on them, rather than the relvancy of the link and the PR of the page it's actually on?
A (John Mueller): I'm not aware of any such changes, but we are constantly working on improving search quality, using information that is relevant and important.

Q: We have noticed that Google indexes/displays our content within 24 hours and then removes it from the index and then re-returns it. Is this right?
A (Matt Cutts): Sean, that can happen at times. I wouldn't worry about it.

Q: I'm worried that we'll miss new visitors because personalized search will drive them to their frequently visited sites instead of those based on organic search relevance. Should I be concerned about this?
A (John Mueller): No -- we try to show variety in the search results and additionally smaller sites are generally quicker in adopting to new trends, allowing new sites to rank for new terms faster.

Q: Do you see personalized search and behavioral metrics as a strong spam fighting tool? It seems to me greater adoption would help in the never ending fight against spam. And could folks Do you see personalized search and behavioral metrics as a strong
A (John Mueller): We are constantly working on improving search quality and if these metrics are relevant, they might be taken into account (though I'm currently not aware of it at the moment)

Q: does Google track what i'm searching for on other sites if i'm logged in with my gmail account? if not, how come i see Google serch results that seem to be related my previous search elsewhere
A (John Mueller): In general, your Google account is probably what you're using for gmail. If you're logged in, those searches may be tracked if you have search history turned on.

Q: Does PPC influence organic, personalized search?
A (John Mueller): Not that I am aware of.

Q: I have a question: why does Google give an "estimated results" number that is different from the actual number of pages indexed from a site (ie using site:url.com)? How would one ensure that the numbers become the same.
A (John Mueller): When we have a high number of possibilities, it is generally not worth the effort to find the exact number of pages that would rank (especially since the user can only see the first 1000).

Q: Does googlebot ignore links that use the nofollow tags or does googlebot follow the links and not assign any value to the link?
A (John Mueller): We ignore links with rel=nofollow

Q: How are noral users aware of the fact that they are being personally targeted?
A (John Mueller): Personalized search results are always tagged in the search results pages.

Q: does the spider index dashes in words like self-employed? How is this treated in search results?
A (John Mueller): I would not worry about punctuation like that. Write your content naturally

Q: As we take 301 I understand that retain the backlinks of the pages and therefore their PR, does the value in the Google toolbar not be visible on the bar to publicly update it?
A (John Mueller): It might take some time for changes to be reflected in the toolbar.

Q: subdomains are case sensitive, right?
A (evan t): Subdomains are not case sensitive.

Q: Why should anything ever be case sensitive online?
A (John Mueller): Flexibility

Q: Hi Matt, Are there any guidelines available on keyword density we have pages that are about 1 single subject and the keyword density is quite high
A (Matt Cutts): Antony, you may not believe this, but we tend not to think much about KW density here at Google, b/c our algorithms handle it pretty well. My advice is to pull in an innocent/non-search friend and have them read the text. If they raise their eyebrow, ...

Q: when comparing keyword A and keyword B why does Google trends and Google adwords disagree on which provides a higher traffic level?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Greg, This would be a better question for our Trends or AdWords support teams. Try dropping by one or both of their Help Groups.

Q: is it possible to talk to a tech by phone?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Roy, if you have a question, it is best to post it to our Webmaster Help Group
A (Jessica Wong): help group can be found here: http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help

Q: If I click a PPC listing, will that visit influence organic, personalized search results?
A (John Mueller): I believe this is tracked only if you have the Toolbar, are logged in and have web history enabled.

Q: I've heard "SEO Gurus" say that Google considers www and non-www domains separately resulting to duplicate content if not taken care of properly. same goes with domain,com/ and domain.com/index.html
A (John Mueller): You can use the preferred domain setting in webmaster tools. I would recommend doing a redirect if possible. We try to figure it out ourselves, but sometimes it helps to push your preference.

Q: Matt Cutts, First THANK YOU for all your videos they are very helpful.
A (Matt Cutts): Glad if you like the videos!

Q: Does choosing a display URL in your webmaster account fix a duplicate domain URL issue (www vs. non www)? Or is a 301 neccessary?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Mike, Either one should work

Q: IS there a problem with URLs that end in .0 like example.com/seo2.0
A (John Mueller): I think this has been resolved.

Q: Are Google going to give any weight to geo location meta tags - if so is there an 'accepted' standard
A (John Mueller): No, we don't use them.

Q: How does Google differentiate between UK and US spelling differences? EG: Jewelry and Jewellery, colour and color
A (John Mueller): We try to figure out what the user is looking for and bring the best results.

Q: What if you use a wild card, still case sensitive?
A (Bergy Berghausen): the wildcards aren't case-sensitive (since they're wildcards), but the other characters are still case-sensitive.

Q: Will Google consider giving any incentive to webmasters/users who helps Google to fight spam? Maybe some sort of point based system would be interesting..This will certainly motivate all the webmasters to come forward and help Google to Keep Spam out..
A (Matt Cutts): Saad, I do like that suggestion a lot. Something for us to think about.

Q: Does GoogleBot tend to have a preference for long or short filenames/directory names?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Quentin. No Googlebot doesn't have preference on short or long filenames/directory names, usualy short names are preferred by users for usability purposes.

Q: I have some Amazon Associates webstores. Obviously they have the same content that Amazon has. And obviously Google sees duplicate content and dont indexes a lot of my webpages. Do you have any suggestions on how to solve this?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Wall-E, as long as your Amazon Associates store provides added value to users, there's nothing you should be worried about

Q: whats the link to that webmaster help group?
A (Jessica Wong): Hi Roy, here is the link to the Official Google Webmaster Help group http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help

Q: Does Google make a website crestor?
A (John Mueller): Yes, we have Google Sites and Google Pages (and Blogger too)

Q: is 301 redirect considered as SPAM?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hi Rabin - a 301 permanent redirect is not considered webspam itself, but if you end up on a page that IS webspam, then that's another problem

Q: is there any way to make java based client application around Google result
A (John Mueller): Not at the moment.

Q: Why aren't crawlers clever enough to know the server type that's returning results and react accordingly?
A (John Mueller): IIS servers can be case sensitive (and are always, with regards to URL parameters). Apache servers can be case insensitive too.

Q: Clean code is better code - but is making sure code is w3c verified worth while?
A (John Mueller): Sure - it can help more users to view your pages properly, which is always good (and can result in more links too). However, we generally try to figure out what is happening on a page, so it's not vital.

Q: Is there any chance, that problems in receiving robots.txt can completely prevent site from indexing?
A (Mariya Moeva): In addition, you can use the robots.txt analysis tool in your Webmaster Tools account to analyze your robots.txt file

Q: is it true that Google first gives free organic traffic and after a while stops giving free organic traffic and encourages to use Adwords?
A (Susan Moskwa): No; there is no relationship between paid search and organic search.

Q: When you use the robots.txt tool in Webmaster Tools does it abide by this case sensitive rule?
A (Maile Ohye): Hi Alan, yes. The robots.txt analysis tool is case sensitive in the correct areas. Directives like "disallow" can be lower or uppercase. Path and directories are correctly case sensitve.

Q: I recently got one of my sites de-indexed out of Google, i believe it was becasue my adsense account got banned for invalid clicks, is this a valid reason to de-index the site? and if so, how long does it take to my site back in there?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Siukin, if your website suddenly disappeared from Google Search results, and you suspect it might have been due to a violation of our quality guidelines, it might be a good idea to submit a request for reconsideration after fixing the issue

Q: Typically, what % of the websites' pages does Google index from large sites
A (Bergy Berghausen): That depends on the size of the site, its PageRank, and a bunch of other factors. This is hard to generalize for.

Q: If another website is copying my content, is there any place where I can report that?
A (Susan Moskwa): www.google.com/dmca.html

Q: Hi John. You do a great job on the forums BTW. Do you have to think about EVERY SINGLE WORD you type knowing it can hit the entire net?
A (John Mueller): Yes - it takes a bit of practice, but posting something that I am not 110% sure about can be problematic when users try to implement it.

Q: Are there any amount of duplicate content pages that are acceptable? In other words if we have 2 pages serving the same content is that just as bad as 40 pages serving duplicate content?
A (Susan Moskwa): The real issue with duplicate content is that Google will try to filter out duplicates when we serve search results. Generally you don't need to worry about it, but if you want to have more control over which version we serve, you can try to mitigate it.

Q: Any plans to make a directive for a case in-sensitive option in robots.txt. Robots.txt is very open to abuse by black hats. Most apache setups on the web are actually no case sensitive because of popular setups.
A (John Mueller): That's a good idea, I'll pass it on to the appropriate group.

Q: if underscores work, then WHY do hyphens?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Patrick, I guess it's a matter of preference

Q: How do you handle the encoded special characters in the urls? What's the best approach, normalize urls or encode them?
A (John Mueller): Keep it as simple as possible.

Q: Can you submit a DMCA take down request if you don't offically have a copyright?
A (Susan Moskwa): Yes. There's not a guarantee that a specific action will be taken as a result, but you're welcome to file one and let the legal folks decide what action to take.

Q: Is there any chance, that problems in receiving robots.txt can completely prevent site from indexing?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Serge, if you suspect that there are issues with the robots.txt file for your site, a good place to check for more information is your Webmaster Tools account -- on the Overview page you will be able to see if there are any robots.txt -related errors.

Q: why would my pages get http errors?
A (Susan Moskwa): You can look in your Webmaster Tools account to see specific reasons for any HTTP errors. Each error links to a help article explaining what's going on in more detail.

Q: if you have dynamic search pages how do you ensure that the content is index .e.g job search
A (John Mueller): Using a logical site structure that leads down to individual entries is always a good idea. We need to be able to crawl a site to understand it optimally.

Q: To Googlers, one of my website was penalized through PR in the last update from PR3 PR2, it has not affected my rankings though. I was ignorant and bought paid links, I understand It was my fault, I am a white hat SEO and believe in natural linking. I jus
A (evan t): PageRank fluctuates often, and I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you believe that you have violated the webmaster guidelines, I would encourse filing a reconsideration request: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843

Q: I just want to know since I am not breaking any rules anymore, is there a chance that I can expect a increase in my PR again? or would Google ignore it in the next update?I am not really a PR fan, btw.
A (Matt Cutts): Zafar, a reconsideration request would be the best place to do that.

Q: It is also because two people can't buy the same domain one with capitals and one without.
A (John Mueller): The domain name is always case insensitive.

Q: Is the mechanism behind Google Site Search that allow owners to display certain results on top similar to what Google uses to display certain results (IE Video, Images) on top in Google Universal?
A (Matt Cutts): Brian, I believe that these are different mechanisms.

Q: i have a client that uses "+" for word connectors not "-" or _", is that bad? or worth changing ... ie http://pacificbuildinggroup.com/PBG+News.html
A (Matt Cutts): Jake, using + as a separator should be fine.

Q: Why does the url name matter? Why would say wordword.html be ranked any different than word-word.html? or does it?
A (John Mueller): I think both would be mostly equivalent.

Q: Google read correctly ajax sites?
A (evan t): Hi Carlos, please see our blog on ajax/flash http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/11/spiders-view-of-web-20.html

Q: is the health engine up and running? What are the next topics for new engines?
A (Susan Moskwa): Our team doesn't really work with health stuff, so we're probably not the best to answer your question.

Q: What's the best way to get problems resolved (ex: geo-targeting when webmaster console doesn't work) if I can't discuss such things publicly in Google Groups?
A (Susan Moskwa): Maybe find a friend who may be experienced in these matters. It's pretty hard to diagnose issues without a specific example or URL.

Q: Matt - how can I go about it?
A (Matt Cutts): Zafar, http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843 and http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto/ are two places to read.

Q: is fluctuating in ranking also depends on which server is active or inactive on that certain day?
A (Susan Moskwa): http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=8524

Q: My blog moved to a new domain, but I still have both blogs running with the same content, so that old visitors dont miss my blog.... Is this treated as duplicate content ?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Alfred, if you have settled on using the new domain for your blog, it might be a good idea to consider setting up a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain

Q: can you guys find scrapers on your own?
A (Pedro Dias): yes

Q: After a site that had been hacked to display malicious code is cleaned up, do we just send a "request reconsideration" through the webmaster tools?
A (Matt Cutts): Adam, that's correct. That's a great way to do it.

Q: I see some 404 errors in my site. How can I see the referer page? Could it come from external sites?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Hugo, usually that type of data is visible in your server logs. Don't forget also to do a check for possible broken internal links

Q: what does googlebot like?
A (Mariya Moeva): milk and cookies!

Q: I work for a Digital Agency and I was wondering if there is any way to share Webmaster Tools access? Just like Analytics, I would like to share the data with colleges and clients.
A (Matt Cutts): Kun, multiple people can register in webmaster console, so that's one way to do it. It's not quite as clean as MCC or some other things, but it is possible for multiple to access the data that way.

Q: spam?
A (Pedro Dias): no thanks

Q: i have noticed multiple times that some of my competitors have multiple pages listed on certain keyword search. i believe Google is trying to make sure only one page from a site is going to be listed. am i hearing it wrong?
A (Matt Cutts): Rabin, we're typically happy to show up to two pages from one hostname in our search results. For a navigational search, it might not be bad to show more results from one domain. But we like diversity and try to preserve it.

Q: how long before googlebot revisits a previously timedout site?
A (Bergy Berghausen): That varies quite widely based on the site and the page on it. Look at your server logs to see how often Googlebot read the page before. It will probably be around that long.

Q: Is there an XML sitemap generator that Google recommends? Or is it better to create by hand?
A (Maile Ohye): Hi Jonathan, we have a python XML Sitemap generator if you'll familiar with command line execution. Otherwise, we've listed other options as well: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34654

Q: Does a Custom Search Engine use the main Google Index to perform a search, or is it a separate indexed version of the site?
A (Susan Moskwa): It's a bit of both. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/05/sitemaps-offer-better-coverage-for-your.html

Q: what things would be bad to do for your website? what not to do (main things)
A (Susan Moskwa): http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

Q: I have a site that's never been indexed. I had someone from Google look at it at SMX West and they couldn't find anything wrong. There are links pointing at it and Yahoo & MSN have it fully indexed with no probs. Any ideas why it could be like that?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hi Brian - we don't have time today to troubleshoot your site. Try asking your question in the Webmaster Help group where webmasters and Googlers alike might be able to take a deeper look: http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help

Q: Matt - how can I do the reconsideration?
A (Jessica Wong): Hi Zafar, Please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reinclusion?hl=en to learn more and submit your site for reconsideration.

Q: is position SIX a penalty?
A (John Mueller): Position 6 is always between 5 & 7. One site has to be at #6.

Q: I have not seen any change when submitting paid text link and spam reports. What happens with these and if someone is grossly using paid text links why is nothing happening?
A (Susan Moskwa): We usually use them to improve our algorithms, so changes may be more long-term than immediate. But we definitely take these reports into consideration. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/impact-of-user-feedback-part-1.html

Q: Does page load time have any effect in organic rankings?
A (Maile Ohye): Hi Michael, page load time is important for user satisfaction (they may leave the site if it's too slow). For Google at this time, it's not considered a signal for ranking. We're always looking to improve the user experience, however, so if you keep
A (Maile Ohye): your page load time down, users and search engines will continuously be happy!

Q: Is there a review/approval process related to business reviews in personalized search, i have reviewed local businesses then did not see those reviews posted
A (Susan Moskwa): I'm not sure; this isn't really our team's specialty. I'd recommend asking in the Google Maps Help Group.

Q: Is informational content better added in a blog or plain pge (html) format?
A (Matt Cutts): Miles, you can do it either way. For Google rankings, it doesn't make a big difference either way.

Q: Does Google favor .html over say .php or do you treat all URL's the same
A (Bergy Berghausen): A URL is a URL. As long as it's serving content we can read, Googlebot doesn't care what the file extension is.

Q: Does Google crawl all the links in a submitted sitemap? If a sitemap, with no errors, is only partially indexed, what could be the meaning behind this?
A (Susan Moskwa): A Sitemap isn't a guarantee of either crawling or indexing; it's just an additional way of making sure Google knows about the URLs you'd like crawled. I'd start here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=8524

Q: What about LinkExperts, how can they still be using paid text links and not getting in trouble with Google. Our competitors are using LinkExperts and getting great rankings in Google but I don't want to recommend LinkExperts because it is against guideline
A (Matt Cutts): Alan, we're always happy to get suggestions for sites to look into.

Q: is there any way to flag to Google that it's crawling a mobile site (which we'd like indexed on Google mobile) compared to the regular site? at the moment we're getting duplicate listings for www.mysite.com and m.mysite.com
A (John Mueller): You can use mobile sitemaps to help with that.

Q: Why doesn't Google news crawlers rely on syndication feeds ?
A (Matt Cutts): I think when Google News started (2002?) syndication feeds weren't as common as they are today. On the bright side, Google News does provide RSS/Atom feed output that you can subscribe to.

Q: does adsense lead to better indexing and rank? Most of trip advsior's pages are really thin content Google ads.
A (Bergy Berghausen): The presence of adsense is not a factor in ranking.

Q: Is violating the webmaster guidelines and then lying about it in a reconsideration request have worse reprecutions than simply violating the guidelines in the first place?
A (Maile Ohye): Very funny, John.

Q: Do Google tools help a site's ranking?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Gordy! The most important thing to focus on is the quality of your site and the content that you provide for users

Q: Is there any difference to SEO between using heading tags vs. font size tags?
A (John Mueller): Heading tags can bring context to your content so they may help users to recognize sections & headings within your pages.

Q: WHY are rankings fluctuating by the minute sometimes????
A (Matt Cutts): Amy, we really do crawl that fast at times, so if someone else does a new blog post or if there's breaking news that causes new web pages to show up on the web, that can cause our rankings to change pretty quickly. When I started, it was more like monthly.

Q: If I submit a sitemap.xml file in the webmaster tools do I still need to clarify the path in the robots.txt as well?
A (Bergy Berghausen): For Google--nope... but you may want to put it there anyway for other robots who may be interested.

Q: Does offering a free or discounted subscription to my site in exchange for a link violate the webmaster guidelines?
A (evan t): Google discourages link buying specifically for PageRank which manipulates Google search results and negatively impacts the relevance and importance of search results for our users.
A (evan t): For more information, please visit out Webmaster Help Center artcile about link schemes at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356.

Q: If i'm moving URL's and the old URL is still in Google, but 301'ed to the new location - should I use the Google URL removal process or just wait for googlebot to figure it out?
A (Susan Moskwa): You can wait for Google to figure it out. You don't need to use the URL removal tool unless your removal is urgent.

Q: Does removing your site's low value pages from the index help the other pages rank better?
A (Matt Cutts): If they are just regular web pages, I wouldn't remove them. If they were really spammy or doorway pages and you suspect that it could have affected your site's ranking or reputation, then I would remove any spammy pages.

Q: i there a way to have a Google person look over your site and see whats wrong with it?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Brian,
A (Mariya Moeva): If you'd like someone to take a look at your site, feel free to post in our Webmaster Help group -- lots of Googlers and savvy webmasters are there ready to help you (:

Q: Is it true that subdomains and directories are now treated the same way for PageRank purposes?
A (John Mueller): Page Rank is based on pages - that includes subdomains, subdirectories and file names (and URL parameters)

Q: Have you ever considered a "move site mapping" addition to the webmaster tools so that webmaster could define pages that they want to move to a new url. For example old page is site.com/old.html and new page is newsite.com/updatedold.html?
A (John Mueller): That's a good idea, I'll pass it on to the appropriate group.

Q: Hi John, Are you planning to provide more features in your script?I already downloaded your scriipt
A (John Mueller): It's easy to modify - give it a shot & post a link to your changes.

Q: i have read many times about the use to twitter or digg or many other social site to use garnering link by the virtue of some sort of clicks posting on those sites. isnt that artifical way of garnering ranking?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Rabin -- if you do something creative or news-worthy that generates a buzz, it would be quite natural that people start linking to you (-:
A (Mariya Moeva): That is what "creative link building" is about (-:

Q: Thoughts on the strength of DMOZ?
A (Matt Cutts): If you can get a DMOZ link it's helpful, but there's no special "DMOZ boost" or anything like that.

Q: Is data and information that is sent Via RSS given preference over content that has been discovered by Googlebot?
A (Matt Cutts): We normally crawl normal/static web pages. Most users don't want RSS to show up in their search results at all.

Q: what is best way in Google to deal with multiplue sites of oe company on a sibgle url, sub-domain or sub-folder?
A (John Mueller): Whatever makes sense to your site structure is what we'll take.

Q: hey, I need to know, why I cannot write any genuine comments in Matt Cutts blogs
A (Matt Cutts): I use Akismet, so it might be the case that Akismet is doing something. But I have a comment policy that comments have to be >1 line, constructive, etc.

Q: why does Google say millions of results found, when only the first 1000 results are displayed?
A (evan t): We try to dispay the most relevant and important results for our users.

Q: i am wondering why is it that the sites that are ranked high in Google is not ranked at all in yahoo and msn. it sometime is very frustrating that one strategy for one SE does not work well with another!
A (Matt Cutts): Rabin, every search engine has its own philosophy of how it ranks, so that means that every company will have different ranking algorithms.

Q: Is there somebody in the panel that can answer questions about Adwords?
A (Susan Moskwa): No, we're only dealing with organic search issues. I'd recommend posting your question in the AdWords Help Group.

Q: What about a 201 redirect?
A (John Mueller): I believe a 201 is not a redirect.

Q: When you change robots.txt, can creating a new link from another domain cause Google to check the robots.txt help speed up Google noticing the change in robots.txt?
A (Susan Moskwa): Googlebot always checks your robots.txt file before crawling your site, so you don't need to link to it (we'll check it when we need to crawl your site).

Q: how guys - how important is a correct last modified date?
A (John Mueller): If in a sitemap file, we may try to use it to recognize new & changed pages so that we can crawl them best.

Q: I am Using IIS for my wordpress and cant able to rewrite the URL is there any way i can improve my blog ranking with default wordpress URLs (ugly urls)
A (John Mueller): It's generally not absolutely necessary. keep adding great content!

Q: I've seen external links shown in Webmaster Tools that have clearly been nofollowed - how is that?
A (John Mueller): We list them as well.

Q: Are any of you guys coming over to SMX London?!
A (John Mueller): Probably (but I'm not sure who :))

Q: Q: hi, i got a website, a month ago my website was on on the first page on Google after entering keywords, but now if i right the same kyewords in Google my bebsite dosen't appear at all. why? my web site is crowled every 3 days! any reason why is happing
A (Susan Moskwa): http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=8524

Q: novice question -Does the Google bot reade the page in a certain direction? i heard that it reads from the top left to bottom right
A (Bergy Berghausen): Googlebot reads the page from beginning to end... since it doesn't render the page the same way browsers do, it reads the page in the order the bytes show up.

Q: If you are click a result in Google results does that help your ranking for the keyword that was entered?
A (John Mueller): It might help with personalized results for YOU but it will not change much in general.

Q: We are changing the name of our site which has been live for some time. Do you have some best practice suggestions for making the switch as smooth as possible from a search-results perspective?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hey Geoff - check out our recent blog post about best practices when moving a site:
A (Reid Yokoyama): http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html

Q: For John: about my previous robots.txt question. From what I read, it seems that a robots.txt not reachable means the start of a sort of penalization. Is it right, or was it a foul?
A (Susan Moskwa): It's not a "penalty" in the way that most people use that term; it just means that we won't be able to crawl anything on your site until either a) your robots.txt file is accessible, or b) it clearly doesn't exist (it returns a 404).

Q: Susan, re: ask a friend... I'm pretty knowledgeable myself and I know there is no issue on our end. But I just want a method to ask questions without competitors viewing the discussion. Can a Google Group be private?
A (Susan Moskwa): There's no way to post privately in our group. This is in order to help as many people as possible. (If I answer a question privately, I've helped 1 webmaster; but if I answer it publicly, I've help anyone who sees that thread in the future)

Q: Why, would a site rank #1 for a search for "Vegas Widget", yet rank on the 3rd page for "Las Vegas Widget", where througout the site the only reference to this term is always "Las vegas Widget"?
A (evan t): Hi rob, there are over 200 factors that come into play for rankings. There could be many reasons why one query is different from another.

Q: If one has 4 or 5 links to a local page (like "order book") should 3 or 4 be "NOFOLLOW" or does that look suspicious some way?
A (John Mueller): That's generally not necessary, but if you do it, it shouldn't impact your site negatively.

Q: Why don't you include actual search numbers in trends or kw selector tool?
A (Matt Cutts): I think we're worried that some people could scrape or abuse that information. Personally I think it would be cool to offer better/more numbers or stats though. We'll think about ways that we could offer crunchier numbers to people.

Q: If you have a domain that has a PR of 4 and I 301'd it to my new site, why hasn't any of the "link juice" passed off or the PR? It's been a few months now.
A (John Mueller): This can take more than a few months.

Q: One of my clients recently purchased a domain name where the previous site was in a very different business than my client's. What would be the best way to notify Google of the change? Resubmitting the URL?
A (Susan Moskwa): File a reconsideration request via Webmaster Tools and let us know that the domain has changed hands.

Q: Does doing a site:domain.com query in image search show all images indexed for that site? I have seen images that are hosted on one domain but being shown on another. This is common with affiliates. Is there a way to isolate only images on the domain

Q: do you care how many 301's there are? Can we take thousands of pages and 301 them?
A (Susan Moskwa): It's okay to have multiple pages that redirect; but you should try to avoid multiple redirects one one URL (e.g. A -> B -> C -> D)

Q: This is a great event! Can we be notified by email about future events?
A (Michael Wyszomierski): Future events would likely be announced on the Webmaster Central blog at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ which also offers an RSS feed which you can subscribe to.

Q: What's the best way to check to see if your content is duplicated (accidentally or by someone else). Is there a tool you can input a URL and check for duplicate content?
A (Susan Moskwa): Try taking a fairly long string of text from your website, and searching for it in quotes on Google. The longer the sentence is, the more likely it is to be unique to your site (so it's an easy way to see what other sites have that same content).

Q: What about a zero second 302 redirect. Is this a 301 redirect?
A (Susan Moskwa): No, they are not the same; the HTTP code that is returned is what's important.

Q: I have a wordpress blog and I am using plug-in to translate the blog to different language using Google service. The problem that Google detect these translated paeg as duplicated content because the translated pages contain the original text.
A (John Mueller): We prefer to include content which is naturally translated.

Q: When Google detects duplicate content, are the links (and associated PageRank) to the "duplicate" pages transferred to the canonical page?
A (Susan Moskwa): We try to aggregrate signals as appropriate. Check out our blog post on "Duplicate content caused by URL parameters" for more details.

Q: How long can I leave a 302 redirect live without breaking any rules?
A (Bergy Berghausen): I just answered this out loud, I believe.

Q: Where can you go to learn how to build Google Gagets?
A (Susan Moskwa): Do a Google search for something like [build Google gadgets] and you should find the developer documentation.

Q: for urls, i have spaces in my URLs
A (John Mueller): I would recommend not using spaces in URLs.

Q: If you are transferring millions of URLs to new subdomains, would using Google sitemaps help or are 301s enough?
A (Susan Moskwa): It’s not a bad idea to submit the new URLs to us via Sitemaps (but it’s not absolutely necessary). I’ve also heard some people say they submit the old URLs via Sitemaps so that we pick up the redirects…

Q: i know this is a dumb question but will custom search help my sites be indexed faster?
A (Matt Cutts): No.

Q: What is the best way to target Quebecois user? a .fr doimain or a .ca domain with meta language = fr?
A (John Mueller): .ca is for Canada, .fr is for France. If the content is only for Quebec, I would recommend using a .ca TLD.

Q: there is a general view that having a lot of backlinks is a strong influence on PageRank. Does Google have a response to this theory?
A (Matt Cutts): It’s more about the quality of the links than just the raw number of links.

Q: If someone clicks on your result for the keyword they entered into Google will that increase your possibilitly in being displayed in future results for the keyword?
A (John Mueller): Not in general.

Q: Does a PPC visit influence personalized results in the organic listings?
A (Matt Cutts): No, we try very hard to prevent anything like advertising on AdWords (or Yahoo/Microsoft ads) from affecting our search results.

Q: Sorry my window closed and I lost my Q&A. Would negatively indenting text links with CSS so that you can use images for the user visible links, but still be Accessible, be regarded as suspicious?
A (evan t): Hi Rich, please see our webmaster guidelines: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66353

Q: one of my keyword phrases brings up the Google map first - is it possible to change one’s listing in this?
A (Susan Moskwa): If you have a listing in Google Maps, you can update it via Google Local Business Center

Q: is a site penalized if it doesn’t show up for related branded searches?
A (Susan Moskwa): Depends on the situation. I’d start here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=8524

Q: If the site has good crawlable design is it still important to include a site map?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Chris! Submitting a sitemap for your site will help Googlebot find all the pages in your site that you think are important, so we would recommend submitting a sitemap

Q: Should I be concerned that content embedded from other rss services be considered duplicate content
A (Pedro Dias): Hi LeRoy, syndicated content should be used sparingly, if you have a site just using syndicated content, most likely it will be seen as a duplicate of the original content.

Q: why do my site links change?
A (Susan Moskwa): That’s kind of the way search works… the web is always changing, our algorithms are changing, things may fluctuate. Here’s more info on sitelinks: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=47334

Q: How do we change the sitelinks?
A (Michael Wyszomierski): Sitelinks are generated automatically, and are only shown on queries for which we feel they may be useful to the user. If you do get these links, you can disallow specific pages from being used as sitelinks Webmaster Tools.

Q: Is Google able to index Silverlight websites
A (John Mueller): I would recommend viewing the pages with a text-browser like Lynx to see what is visible.

Q: I have a sugggestion ib the external linkssection wouiuld it be possible to add alphbebtical links at hte tp to find links that you’re trying to get?? example: a- b- c- d
A (Susan Moskwa): I’d recommend downloading this data and manipulating it using your favorite spreadsheet application if you need more advanced features

Q: If you don’t have time to keep up with updating your sitemap, is it better to not have one?
A (Matt Cutts): I wouldn’t worry about that. Ideally if you have something like a blog, that could update your sitemap for you though.

Q: How do you compete with sites that buy links and rank high because of it?
A (Matt Cutts): Most folks know this, but I’ll re-mention this page: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?hl=en is the place where you can send paid link feedback to Google and we’ll check it out.

Q: What are you doing about instances of one video dominating the SERP because it’s been submitted to numerous video sharing sites using a non competitive keyword phrase as it’s title?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hey Rich - we try best to provide a diversity of results. If suspect a site is violating our Webmaster Guidelines, feel free to submit a spam report: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en

Q: Hi , We have a very popular site that is constantly having content scrapped there are literally 1000’s of sites with our content on how will Google look at this
A (Susan Moskwa): http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/duplicate-content-due-to-scrapers.html

Q: A suggestion for search.. If you could find a way to display icons in the SERPs indicating what type of site. eg wiki, info, eShop, blog, forum etc. Would make searching easier
A (John Mueller): Good idea, I’ll pass it on!

Q: Does the location of your site hosting affect the local results your site shows up for?
A (Susan Moskwa): Yes, it may. We look at server location and ccTLD among other factors

Q: I know that generally .edu and .gov sites rank better than if they were .com or .org; but is there a similar ranking boost that is given to nonprofits?
A (Matt Cutts): Eric, there’s no “.edu boost” that looks at the .edu alone and just boosts for that.

Q: sorry about that. I’m seeing competitors at #1 and #3 in the SERPs with 10k+ backlinks, while #2 only has 60~ links that look more “honest” Spam report or wait for your algo to flag it?
A (Mariya Moeva): Ken, if you think that a site might be violating our Quality Guidelines, do submit a spam report through your Webmaster Tools account

Q: How often do site links update? We’ve noticed that sometimes the site links on one Google server are different than another server. Also they don’t always match what is in the Web Master Tools.
A (Susan Moskwa): If they don’t match what you see in Webmaster Tools, please post in our Help Group to let us know.

Q: once I geotarget my site, can I undo it later?
A (Susan Moskwa): Yes, you can change that setting in Webmaster Tools at any time.

Q: are there certain tools from Google that googlebot likes?
A (Matt Cutts): I would say sitemaps is a good one.

Q: I have a friend, his name is Temi, http://www.google.com/search?q=temi and he has been wondering why for so 2 years he could not beat the number 1 guy. Looks like a domain age factor. Is this the real cause of this, because the number 1 site has nothing on
A (Matt Cutts): Typically there might be more people linking to the #1 Temi that we give more weight to.

Q: Is webmaster tools ever going to have geo targeting, such as stae level pages. My site has state page-level unqiue state content and we are seeing a significant amount of traffic from states all over the US. is googlebot already smart enough to do this?
A (Susan Moskwa): If you want to give more specific geographic information than just country-level info, Google Local Business Center would be the right place to do that.

Q: Will Google auto-recheck Sitemaps in which errors were detected? I have a single Sitemap_index.xml file that references hundreds of individual sitemap_xx.xml files. Some of these sitemap_xx.xml files are reporting errors. Do I need to resubmit the index?
A (John Mueller): Yes, we automatially try them regularly.

Q: Guys, I found something in my css file that looks like a recent Danny Sullivan oops. It does not point to anything in my page, but nevertheless: #content-title H1.swap SPAN { DISPLAY: block; TEXT-INDENT: -3000px I removed it, but should I be worried?
A (Susan Moskwa): If you notice any sudden changes in your site’s performance, you’re welcome to submit a reconsideration request if you’re concerned.

Q: Saw u at Google IO. You taught me soo much so quickly. That’s 2 great presentations now. Thanks!
A (Maile Ohye): Hi Andrew, thanks for your kind words! So I guess I’m 2-2. If we’re ever at the same conference again, please come say “hello!”

Q: Is the incoming links list in Google Webmaster Tools an accurate estimator of all the incoming links that Google thinks as a backlink?
A (Susan Moskwa): It’s a sampling of your incoming links that we know about, not always 100%.

Q: Does Google’s knowledge of a site’s web visitor activity (via Google Analytics) affect SERPs?
A (Susan Moskwa): No it doesn’t.

Q: is PPC a way for Google to see what you are Specifically Selling? Does Googlebot see that?
A (Susan Moskwa): No; organic search is completely separate from paid search (PPC).

Q: I am considering embedding feeds from several rss services in my pages. Would Google consider this duplicate content?
A (John Mueller): I would recommend embedding them in a way that they are not crawled (perhap using JavaScript / AJAX).

Q: Who of you all is going to SMX in S?o Paulo in August?
A (Matt Cutts): Not sure. But we are sitting in a room called Sao Paulo

Q: Recently Googlebot has been crawling through my search box and indexing duplicate content because my search box creates ugly parameters. Do I need to spend the time to block these URLs or will Google figure it out?
A (Susan Moskwa): Check out our blog post on “Duplicate content caused by URL parameters.” Generally, we can figure it out.

Q: Hi guys, Googlers, sorry for me being late…. and sorry if i’d duplicate a question. But, what’s your policy on adult sites that are ranking top for very competitive and high traffic keywords and which obtained their positions only via pure link buying?
A (evan t): Hi Nenand, if you believe a site is buying links, please report it at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks

Q: Bit late joining - but just for clarity - Maps and Gadgets boost search returns? I love all the new stuff - spend a lot of time on them - but need to convince my partner that this is time well spent
A (John Mueller): We love pages where we can read the content easily. Maps and Gadgets add value to users, which can indirectly impact your rankings as well.

Q: Does &pws=0 still turn off personalized results?
A (John Mueller): Yes, as far as I know.

Q: I was told that you only need to submit a siotemap once and not worry about updating it as G bot will crawl all the pages eventually. Should I continuously update my sitemap or submit it once
A (Susan Moskwa): You can continue to update your Sitemap (i.e. change the file), but you don’t need to resubmit it every time because it’s correct that we will crawl it periodically.

Q: what if yoou are only moving part of a site for international reasons
A (Bergy Berghausen): If you are moving content to a new location and it will remain there, using a 301 redirect is the recommended best practice.

Q: Would it pick up stuff not on you rsitemap?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi, if you mean that Google gets URLs not in your sitemap, the answer is yes

Q: Maile, I think your response got cut off.
A (Maile Ohye): Yes, it appears there’s a character limitation in typing the response. I re-posted with completion of the response. Hooray!

Q: What if you have a list of 302 redirected URLs on your sitemap. Any problem?
A (Bergy Berghausen): Nope. That lets us know the URLs are there to be crawled. We will try to crawl the pages in your sitemap, regardless of what they return. They will, after that, be treated like any other 302 we get, being revisited from time to time and retaining rank.

Q: Hi Evan, I’ve done that dozens of times so far, never got it removed from index! Also how could you be sure I am not submitting a legit site?
A (evan t): Google thoroughly investigates reports of deceptive practices and take appropriate action when we uncover genuine abuse. However, we do not respond back to Spam Reports.

Q: Is there a benifit to adding my main target keyword to the filename(s) of my sitemap(s)?
A (Susan Moskwa): Nope; Sitemaps are used for discovering URLs, it generally doesn’t matter what they’re named

Q: guys, when you have a company site, say in travel and or vacation rentals - many affiliates use your content/pics/pricing etc.. does this apply to the Google Duplicate content rule? If so, suggestions on best handling it?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Rob, as long as your site has original content and images, you have no reason to be worried
A (Maile Ohye): Hi Rob, did you see our recent post on dupe content? We also have a few words on syndicated content: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/duplicate-content-due-to-scrapers.html

Q: Does using a CMS such as Drupal inhibit the ability of the googlebot to crawl the page?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Jay, no unless you restrict it, via .htaccess, meta-tags or robots.txt

Q: what about the .5 and 1 rating on sitemaps? what are they? do they mean anything?
A (Susan Moskwa): They tell us the relative priority of various pages on your site. This can help us prioritize our crawl of your site, among other things.

Q: Has Maile been on the Cranberry and Vodka yet today?!
A (Matt Cutts): Maile looks sober to me, Pete.

Q: But does Googlebot see PPC?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Brian, usually PPC are links that work with JavaScript, and Googlebot doesn’t execute JavaScript

Q: Does Google rank Blogs differently from websites?
A (Bergy Berghausen): We use the same algorithms, since blogs are websites. However, using a content management system can sometimes cause other issues. If you’ve got specific concerns about your blog, feel free to stop by the Webmaster Help Group.

Q: Does Google give any more “points” to sites who use meta keywords, or you don’t care about that meta tag whatsoever?
A (John Mueller): We generally ignore the meta keywords tag.

Q: how about PPC in MSN or Yahoo? does that affect organic ranking in Google?
A (Susan Moskwa): No.

Q: Matt Dougherty, I think your answer got cut off.
A (Matt Dougherty): aha, thanks. These questions are flying by :)… I was saying that if the gift is intended to gain page rank, it fits our definition of ‘paid’. If someone uses, reviews, or recommends your product, I’d say that’s an organic link. Again, it’s about intent.

Q: My site’s content is often stolen by people who use the content as “food” for an AdWord generating site. Can Google be more picky about who gets AdSense?
A (Susan Moskwa): You’re welcome to file DMCA takedown requests for people who are stealing your content.

Q: Our major content site is hosted in the US (eg. www.mysite.com) which redirect to customised local versions in countries such as the UK and Australia (uk.mysite.com and au.mysite.com) by user IP. However, if you search for our major search terms…
A (John Mueller): This may be confusing to users — and serach engine crawlers. You would need to make sure that your content is statically available with individual URLs.

Q: WHAT ARE THE 3 MOST INPORTANT THINGS TO DO TO EARN A GOOD PAGERANK?
A (Mariya Moeva): Content, content and content (:

Q: Bergy well in one country the content is permantely moving but in another country it is staying the sam…. any reccomendations?
A (Bergy Berghausen): If you’re making new content for a new country, there’s no need to 301, though you may want to link. If you have content for the country and are changing it to new URLs, then you may want to use 301s.

Q: Hi Reid, so specifically, is anything being done about a lack of diversity with video in the SERP?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hey Rich, we’re trying our best to improve our results for users. If there’s a query where you see a lack of diversity with video in SERP, there’s a link on the bottom that says “Dissatisfied? Help us improve”
A (Reid Yokoyama): There, you can let Google know more about why the results for a certain query are not satisfying to you. But again, we’re working hard to continue to improve search results in all areas for users

Q: For pages that are required to be on the site, but we don’t necessary want the Googlebot indexing, like Privacy Policy, can we use a “no follow” on links pointing to it and disallow on robots.txt?
A (Michael Wyszomierski): Nofollow may not prevent a specific page from being indexed, since you can only control the links on your own site. I’d recommend this article for blocking/removing content: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35301

Q: WHAT ARE THE MOST WEIGHTED THINGS FOR GOOGLEBOT
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Brian, I would say original content and organic links

Q: matt, when you have sites, say in travel or vacation rentals - many affiliates use your content/pics etc.. does this apply to the Google Dup rule?
A (Matt Cutts): I wouldn’t worry about images, but if your site is only 100% affiliate text repeated, that would look pretty bad.

Q: Hi Googlers, does your algorithm give more importance to a link from a .com as compared to .info?
A (John Mueller): Links are links

Q: Would I be able to do a search for all of the panelists for VIDEOS like I have seen for MATT CUTTS for their are alot out thier that are SALE VIDEOS… I dont like the Sales Pitch Videos I like EDUCATION…
A (Susan Moskwa): Take a look at our blog, we try to post informative videos there from time to time.

Q: How do you deal with dot-us-com sites?
A (evan t): I believe Matt answered a similar question about .info. We treat them all the same in regards to pagerank.

Q: Sorry for stupid Q. but have Google Analytics any kind of API? And why if not? =)
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hey Serge - we don’t have any team members who work on Analytics in the chat today. Try checking out the Google Analytics support section for some details about Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/support_overview.html

Q: If you geotarget your domain to .co.uk will it ever show up on Google.com or any other english speaking Google engine
A (Susan Moskwa): It can show up on other Google TLDs if the searcher hasn’t selected the “only search pages from [country]” option (where “country” isn’t UK)

Q: Does GEO meta data impact geo targeting?
A (John Mueller): No, we don’t read that meta tag at the moment.

Q: PLease can someone tell me if i am doing anything wrong here becasue i have asked 5 questions and only 1 got answered. This is my first time so i aplogise if i have broken any rules etc
A (Susan Moskwa): No, it’s just a little crazy here and we can only answer a fraction of the questions submitted. There are way more of you than us!

Q: DOES GOOGLEBOT LIKE HYPHENS LIKE I HAVE A DOMAIN TOUR-DATES.US, DOES THAT LOOK BAD TO GOOGLEBOT?
A (John Mueller): That’s fine with us!

Q: what is the best way to handle indexing issues due to printable pages and image galleries from shopping carts ?
A (Susan Moskwa): Put the canonical URL (your preferred version) in your Sitemap. We’ve done several blog posts on dealing with duplicate content, I’d recommend checking those out (just search our blog for [duplicate content])

Q: should i submit a sitemap once, or keep it up to date and resubmit it occasionally
A (Bergy Berghausen): Yes. You should keep your sitemap up to date so we know what exists.

Q: If I want to migrate from one TLD to another, what is the best way to get the same page rank for the pages in new TLD? 301?
A (John Mueller): 301 is right!

Q: I submitted a spam report, a new competitor less than a year old - paid links blog posts etc… This site still remains on top 3 pages. This leaves me with less faith on Google finding paid links, anything you can say to help with my confidence?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Lani, thank you for submitting a spam report, we do look at all of them. If you still suspect that the site might be engaging in spammy behavior, submit it through your Webmaster tools account
A (Reid Yokoyama): and to add to Mariya’s note, you may or may not see visible results from our reports - sometimes the reports goes towards larger-scale improvements to our search algorithms.

Q: can we use <noscript> to add some properly formatted and relevant text for a splash page (even in html). My art director cringe when i talk about SEO.
A (John Mueller): I would not recommend using a splash page.

Q: Thx Susan. Responding to your reply: so is the aggregation of signals only with duplicate content casued by URL parameters?
A (Susan Moskwa): No, it applies to any duplicate content (that’s just the name of the blog post, I wanted to make sure you could find it since I don’t have the URL offhand).

Q: HOW OFTEN DO YOU GUYS HAVE THESE WEBINARS?
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Brian, I think Adam mentioned this, but this is our second event. We don’t have a regular schedule in place, bubt so far its been once/quarter.

Q: Should ads always have a nofollow tag?
A (Mariya Moeva): Wall-E, if you have paid links on your site, it is best to disclose them as paid and nofollow them

Q: Q: Hi, me again. my site is indexted by google, www.justperfect.uk.com, carpet cleaning company, 3 weeks ago i was on the 1 page on google. but i am not any more, even on the page 20. my website is crowled every 3 days.
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Adam, for specific site reviews, check out the Webmaster Help Group.

Q: Is it better for wordpress blogs to have permanent links only one level deeper than url (domain.com/post-name) or it doesn’t matter whether they are one level or 2-3 levels (domain.com/2008/06/postname) ?
A (John Mueller): Both are fine for us.

Q: So “Officially”, Google sees SEO as having a future?
A (Matt Cutts): Certainly, as long as the SEO is whitehat.

Q: how many times. on average, will an average site be crawled/month?
A (Mariya Moeva): Hi Michael, crawl rates vary widely according to type and size of sites — there is no way to give an “average” crawl rate for all sites

Q: Will there ever be support in webmaster tools to ignore a tracking query in a URL (e.g. www.example.com/page1&source=1234)
A (Susan Moskwa): For now you can use wildcards in your robots.txt file to block crawling of particular URL parameters

Q: Are there any problems with remotely hosting sitemaps?
A (John Mueller): No problem, robots.txt allows for easy cross-site submission of Sitemap files.

Q: is Google using ip to trigger localized search results
A (John Mueller): Yes.

Q: we added a noodp and 2 days later the pages connected to that tag dropped off Google could these events be related
A (Matt Dougherty): Antony, It is hard to say. If we were using the ODP snippet because we didn’t have any other content crawled for that page, we may now have nothing to show. The situation sounds like it needs a deeper dive. Try posting this in our Help Group.

Q: HOW DO WE KNOW WHEN THEY ARE GONNA BE?
A (Michael Wyszomierski): We will announce them on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, which can be found linked from http://www.google.com/webmasters/

Q: COOL! Got any Holland rooms too?
A (Matt Cutts): I think we have an Amsterdam room..

Q: hi we think our competitor has been sending lots of false links to our site “google bowling” can this effect us and how can we check on this?
A (John Mueller): I would not worry about these links.

Q: 404 error page. Why don’t you report the page referer so user can take action. Don’t answer that we can have a look to log file. I don’t know outside Italy, but here sometimes web host rarely offer web site display, though to web logs
A (John Mueller): I would add Analytics (or other on-page tracking) to those pages. That can give you your referrer information directly.

Q: Can linking across several sites that you own be seen as paid linking? (Large networks like IAC)
A (Susan Moskwa): It may be seen as a linking scheme depending on how unnatural it looks. More info: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

Q: Does it do anything to submit new pages to Google? or as long as they are linked to from the previously indexed pages are we good? I’m assuming that ultimately the best strategy is to submit an xml sitemap and continue to update it with the new pages
A (Susan Moskwa): You’re correct

Q: How can I increase the number of INDEXED URLs from my sitemap for I have 34872 TOTAL URLS for several years now and only 3872 ARE INDEXED
A (Maile Ohye): Hi Scott, it’s good to make sure the not indexed URLs have unique (and compelling) content. Check that they’re not dupes. Run a [site:yourdomain] search and check Content Analysis in Webmaster Tools for unique titles, etc.

Q: did i hear matt correctly to ignore focusing on keyword metatags?
A (Susan Moskwa): Yes

Q: how long does it take to get the geotargeting picked up?
A (Susan Moskwa): It can take several weeks, I believe

Q: Can you get John Mueller a raise? He deserves it. Thanks.
A (Bergy Berghausen): If it were up to me, I’d give him 2.

Q: What about the Meta title
A (Matt Dougherty): Amy, We do use the title tag. You will see it in almost every search result.

Q: Can submitting you sitemapt too many times (like oince a week) hurt rankings
A (Susan Moskwa): There’s not really a need to do that; we’ll crawl your Sitemap periodically whether or not you resubmit it, so you don’t need to resubmit compulsively unless you have a lot of free time

Q: why Google sites (sites.google.com) is not crawled by google?
A (Michael Wyszomierski): Hi Amit, try searching for site:sites.google.com/ on Google and you will see that these sites can be crawled by Google.

Q: The more sites you have linking to your site, the better, right? Does this count in social sites like myspace, or facebook, etc?
A (John Mueller): I would concentrate on relevant links that bring you visitors which like your site

Q: Can Google read words in images and swf files?
A (Michael Wyszomierski): Hi Alan, I took this one on audio, but the basic answer is that for better accessibility, it’s always a great idea to provide alternate content as text. For images in particular, use the alt attribute in your img tag.

Q: What kind of link buliding techniques are approved by Google?
A (Pedro Dias): I’d say any natural technique based on natural linking

Q: is directory submission still a good way to build links? or its not recommended?
A (Pedro Dias): Hi Ernest, I’d be very selective choosing directories. I’d rather recommend building links naturally and by merit.

Q: does Google search / list Twitter posts?
A (evan t): Seems like it try a search for [site:twitter.com]

Q: Do Google punish thin affiliate sites ( sites with no more than 5 10 pages) ?
A (Susan Moskwa): http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76465

Q: Can you remotely host the sitemap without putting in robots.txt
A (Susan Moskwa): Yes; see here for details: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=75712

Q: Clarifying…our client is concerned about others seeing sitemap.xml, so they’re concerned about putting it in robots.txt
A (Maile Ohye): When the Sitemap is declared in robots.txt, many good people can see it, such as all the search engines of sitemaps.org (not just Google, but Microsoft and Yahoo! too).

Q: i saw a meta copyright tag the other day? is that a new thing?
A (Bergy Berghausen): I think Matt just answered this out loud–”don’t worry about it” was the answer

Q: what influences the # of pages that get indexed on a site?
A (Bergy Berghausen): As Matt mentioned earlier, it’s mostly PageRank, but there can be some other factors involved.

Q: If we have FRAMES how bad does this look to Google.
A (John Mueller): It can confuse users to land on a framed page, so I would not recommend it.

Q: Pedro you mentioned that you would selective in choosing directories could you advise on few selected ones you would go with?

A (Pedro Dias): Hi Ernest. I’d probably look at Dmoz and Yahoo Directory… High quality directories.

\\ tags: , google, Google Reference, Pagerank, Reference, Seo