Google Site Clinic

Uli Lutz, Adel Saoud, Google Search Quality TeamFebruary 2010

1.Google Search 2.Google Webmaster Tools3.Information sources for webmasters

Agenda

• Paid search AdWords advertising program. Paid listings. • Natural search Ranking determined algorithmically. Unpaid, unbiased

listings.

Anatomy of Google search results

Our goals

Support for all webmasters• Provide the same tools for all sites, large or small• 100M+ sites on the web; we need something that scales

Better search results• The most objective and relevant search results• Better information → better web sites• Better web sites in our index → better search results for users• Better understanding of web sites → better ability to handle them

Crawling and Indexing

Crawling: Create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index

the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. Google’s web crawler has the

username googlebot

Indexing:Google determines the content of each page (e.g. PR, keywords)

and stores static information about those pages in an index.

Serving:Process of returning

search results that are relevant and match the

user query

So…what does the Googlebot read on a website?

• Text in HTML• Files such as .doc, .xls, .pdf• Incoming and outgoing links• Name of a link („Anchor text“)• Meta tags (title, description)

Googlebot understands less about:• Non text- files like movies, images• Flash (only to a certain extent)• Java Script (and AJAX)

Examples of what Google sees on a site

• Non text- files like movies, images …

Alt text should be brief, but accurate

Image is not displayed for some reason but at least the alt text is

Webmaster Tools front to backExplore it all and come back often!

Solving problems with Webmaster Tools

1. One of my sitelinks is outdated!2. Oh no! I didn't mean for that page to be in Google!3. I redid my site and now my traffic dropped!4. My images aren't showing up in search - why?5. My site's a .com but it's targeted to people in

Ireland!6. My previous SEO did spammy stuff;

how do I get my site back in Google?7. My competitors are doing spammy things.

What can I do about it?

Dashboard

Crawl errors

Links to your site

Queries your site ranks for

Tip #1: Content analysis

Title tags, alt attributes and descriptions: Make them descriptive and accurate

Content analysis

Sitelinks

Title

Description

Content analysis - Sitelinks

Manage your site links

Tip #2: Identify crawl errors

“Make sure search bots can crawl your site”

Crawl errors

Error detailsList of URLsError categories

Tip #3: Give information that users are looking for

“Users type words to find your pages: Make sure that your site

includes those words within”

How do users find your site?

Top search queries your site ranks for

Top searches for which users reached your site

Tip #4: Set a geographic target

Tell Google the location of your web site:Improve geographic targeting

Set a geographic target

• If your site targets several different regions (e.g. all English speakers), you don’t need to set a target

• We also look at TLD and server location

Get the information you needMake the most of Google resources

Webmaster Central

www.google.ie/webmasters

Webmaster Guidelines

Official Webmaster blog

Help Center

Feel free to use "Ringsend" in the subject to raise our attention

Google Help Forum

www.google.ie/webmastersExplore it!

Thank you!