I had informed my readers about the Google Webmaster Central Live Chat ‘JuneTune’ that was scheduled for June 19th 2008. ‘JuneTune’ has been a roaring success and for the sake of information, I would like to keep my readers informed with every bit that went on at the event. In case you like to refresh as to what happened in the last Google Webmaster Central Live Chat, then here is the recap for you all all ‘Google’s First Ever Webmaster Central Live Chat Session A Roaring Success!’

Search Engine Roundtable has done quite an appreciable job of recording the whole chat session in an MP3 format and also for providing a text transcript of the Live Chat Session for all the interested readers. Here is the audio clip of the live chat:

Here are some of the important transcripts from Google Webmaster Central Live Chat ‘JuneTune’:

Webmaster: can google crawl flash sites/

Google Expert: Somewhat — we can extract some information from the flash files, but it’s generally not the same as with HTML sites/pages.

Webmaster: 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 ?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: Is there a comprehensive list of the tags that GoogleBot can read somewhere?

Google Expert:
Hi Quentin, try this HelpCenter doc – http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812

Webmaster: I’m interested in the huge SERP flux I’m experience for my main keyword.

Google Expert: I’d start here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444

Webmaster: 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.

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: how do you define and penalize duplicate content? are syndication deals excluded?

Google Expert: 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

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: 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

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: Can you explain the efficacy of the Link: operator in regard to it’s “accuracy” ?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: if the site is designed with css, does the crawler throw out the .css and look only at the HTML?

Google Expert: Typically we wouldn’t crawl CSS, Kien, but in a few limited circumstances we can (e.g. if we’re checking for hidden text).

Webmaster: In regards to the Flash files, I believe it is possible to create Flash movies with extra accessible content, correct?

Google Expert: 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

Webmaster: is an empty robots.txt bad?

Google Expert: Hi ralf – an empty robots.txt by default will allow all Internet spiders to crawl throug

Webmaster: does google work with any seo companies?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: Our pages are using mod_rewrite to strip “.html”– Will google think of “process” and “process.html” as separate pages?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: can you use geotargeting to target a region or a # of countries?

Google Expert: Hi Seth, geotargeting at the moment is only possible to target single countries, no regions are supported at the moment.

Webmaster: @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.

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: i am not seeing any slide, but thats fine i guess!

Google Expert: Try clicking the little “return” arrow in the bottom right.

Webmaster: Whats the average time after which the PR of a site gets updated?

Google Expert: We typically do pushes to the toolbar every 3-4 months, so it can take that long between toolbar data pushes.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: 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.

Google Expert: 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

Webmaster: beside content, what are the top 3 things to do to your site to rank high ( short version)

Google Expert:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349

Webmaster: does google ‘value’ a website incorporating a relevant blog and forum

Google Expert: Hi Paul, I would say that an organic blog or forum definitely adds value to your website by creating a community effect.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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).

Webmaster: Whats the average time after which a site’s PR gets updated? any defined rules for that ?

Google Expert: Hi Abhijeet – Google’s index is continuously updating itself so there are no defined timeframes when a site’s ranking will change

Webmaster: 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

Google Expert:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=8524

Webmaster: Does google take anything from links taged nofollow, for example does it read the anchor text and credit that to the destination?

Google Expert: No, it basically drops that link from our link graph (it ignores it).

Webmaster: I think my site was hacked through an XSS hole (search functionality). How can I protect that hole in the future?

Google Expert: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/check-your-search-box-for-xss-exploits/ talked about this a bit and pointed to a good blog posts.

Webmaster: Where is the best place to see what keywords people are typing in ?

Google Expert: This tool gives feedback based on user queries: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Webmaster: 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.

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: 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

Google Expert: Hi Ankit, I have a python script on my site at http://johnmu.com/ that will convert those files into more readable ones.

Webmaster: Will hiding navigation items with css (that are displayed on certain pages/directories) have a negative impact when google indexes the site?

Google Expert: 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?

Webmaster: 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.

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: 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

Google Expert: 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, …

Webmaster: Does google differentiate between searches in lower case and searches with proper capitalization?

Google Expert: We may take this into account if we can recognize that it is relevant to the query.

Webmaster: 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

Google Expert: That could be personalized search. It’s also the case that our rankings do change naturally as we crawl different docs, too.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: Hi Peter, echoing what John just talked about, I’d say making sure your content is useful to users is the best approach.

Webmaster: After a reconsideration request, do you typically notify webmasters that the penalty has been lifted?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: is it possible to talk to a tech by phone?

Google Expert: Hi Roy, if you have a question, it is best to post it to our Webmaster Help Group

Google Expert: help group can be found here: http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: Is there any way to speed up the time between selecting a country for targeting and it actually beign updated in the system?

Google Expert: We’re working on improving the webmaster experience with Webmaster Tools, including speeding up the reaction time for specific features.

Webmaster: 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..

Google Expert: Saad, I do like that suggestion a lot. Something for us to think about.

Webmaster: How long does it take for 301s and 410s to take effect?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: if there is code commented that contains keyword phrases, is that seen by google as spamming/spoofing?

Google Expert: Hi Gregory, commented code is ignored by robots, therefore it will have no influence in anything

Webmaster: How sensitive is Google Local to differences in addresses? Will a difference of a space or a dash create confusion in the matrix?

Google Expert: Quentin, your question is probably best answered by the Local experts here: http://local.google.com/support/

Webmaster: What reasons may cause Google to ignore a small percentage of pages in a small sitemap (less than 1K pages submitted by Console).

Google Expert: We do look at the number of links when we decide how much to crawl, so just submitting a sitemap doesn’t guarantee crawling.

Webmaster: 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

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: I wouldn’t expect this to be a big problem. Plenty of sites don’t want to show a cached link for various reasons.

Webmaster: What if you use a wild card, still case sensitive?

Google Expert: the wildcards aren’t case-sensitive (since the’re wildcards), but the other characters are still case-sensitive.

Webmaster: How do Google handle microformats? Will I get a better seo if I use them?

Google Expert: 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 🙂

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: Hi Wall-E, as long as your Amazon Associates store provides added value to users, there’s nothing you should be worried about

Webmaster: 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.

Google Expert: Hi Brian – just caught your question. Google still considers doorway pages and obviously webspam as violation of our Webmaster Guidelines.

Google Expert: 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

Webmaster: What about paid links? Does Google really manage to identify paid links?

Google Expert: Hi Mike, yes Google does identify paid links.

Webmaster: If another website is copying my content, is there any place where I can report that?

Google Expert: www.google.com/dmca.html

Webmaster: Stupid Question.. should i submit my site to google monthly/yearly ( told by seo site to do this)?

Google Expert: Brian, I wouldn’t bother. You can submit it once at at google.com/addurl.html

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: Typically, what % of the websites’ pages does Google index from large sites

Google Expert: That depends on the size of the site, its PageRank, and a bunch of other factors. This is hard to generalize for.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: Matt, AZEA uses hidden text with it’s image nav links (-999ems indent), is that likely to be regarded as suspicious?

Google Expert: Hi Rich,

Google Expert: We appreciate your assistance in maintaining the quality of our search results.

Google Expert: If you’ve found a particular site that’s spamming our index, we’d like
to hear about it, and encourage you to submit a Spam Report at
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport

Webmaster: 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.

Google Expert: We are constantly working on our algorithms and changes can and will take place over time.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: Sean, that can happen at times. I wouldn’t worry about it

Webmaster: Can you submit a DMCA take down request if you don’t offically have a copyright?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: 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.

Google Expert: Zafar, a reconsideration request would be the best place to do that.

Webmaster: whats the link to that webmaster help group?

Google Expert: Hi Roy, here is the link to the Official Google Webmaster Help group http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help

Webmaster: 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

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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

Webmaster: i have a client that uses “+” for word connectors not “-” or _”, is that bad? or worth changing … iehttp://pacificbuildinggroup.com/PBG+News.html

Google Expert: Jake, using + as a separator should be fine.

Webmaster: Has Google started crawling video sitemaps faster than 2-3 months as stated in the last session?

Google Expert: I’m not aware of changes in this regard at the moment. However, we’re always working on improving our processes.

Webmaster: Does GoogleBot tend to have a preference for long or short filenames/directory names?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: I’ve been using google Analytics for a while. Since then, some customers complains about slow access. Could it be related?

Google Expert: 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

Webmaster: When you use the robots.txt tool in Webmaster Tools does it abide by this case sensitive rule?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: To what extent is google developing LSI in it’s search algo?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: is fluctuating in ranking also depends on which server is active or inactive on that certain day?

Google Expert: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=8524

Webmaster: if underscores work, then WHY do hyphens?

Google Expert: Hi Patrick, I guess it’s a matter of preference 🙂

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: Adam, that’s correct. That’s a great way to do it.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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

Webmaster: 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.

Google Expert: Thanks, I’ll pass it on to the appropriate team!

Webmaster: Is there any chance, that problems in receiving robots.txt can completely prevent site from indexing?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: my site disapeared for 7 days and came back today. Should I be worried that it might be a warning of a problem

Google Expert: It’s always good to be on top of changes.If you can’t recognize anything, I would recommend posting in Webmaster Help groups.

Webmaster: 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.

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: Does a Custom Search Engine use the main Google Index to perform a search, or is it a separate indexed version of the site?

Google Expert:
It’s a bit of both. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/05/sitemaps-offer-better-coverage-for-your.html

Webmaster: Is there any chance, that problems in receiving robots.txt can completely prevent site from indexing?

Google Expert: In addition, you can use the robots.txt analysis tool in your Webmaster Tools account to analyze your robots.txt file

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: It’s best to keep URLs in a way that users can recognize what the content is about.

Webmaster: what things would be bad to do for your website? what not to do (main things)

Google Expert:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

Webmaster: 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.

Google Expert: We ignore it.

Webmaster: how long before googlebot revisits a previously timedout site?

Google Expert: 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. 🙂

Webmaster: I see some 404 errors in my site. How can I see the referer page? Could it come from external sites?

Google Expert: 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 🙂

Webmaster: Is there an XML sitemap generator that Google recommends? Or is it better to create by hand?

Google Expert: 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

Webmaster: is 301 redirect considered as SPAM?

Google Expert: 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 🙂

Webmaster: Matt – how can I do the reconsideration?

Google Expert: Hi Zafar, Please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reinclusion?hl=en to learn more and submit your site for reconsideration.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: 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 ?

Google Expert: 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

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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

Webmaster: Does Google favor .html over say .php or do you treat all URL’s the same

Google Expert: A URL is a URL. As long as it’s serving content we can read, Googlebot doesn’t care what the file extension is.

Webmaster: Is informational content better added in a blog or plain pge (html) format?

Google Expert: Miles, you can do it either way. For Google rankings, it doesn’t make a big difference either way.

Webmaster: 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

Google Expert: Alan, we’re always happy to get suggestions for sites to look into.

Webmaster: subdomains are case sensitive, right?

Google Expert: Subdomains are not case sensitive.

Webmaster: 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.

Google Expert: 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).

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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

Webmaster: Is there a way to see search listings from the past? To see how ranked yesterday or the day before for example?

Google Expert: Not at the moment, but that’s an interesting idea!

Webmaster: 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

Google Expert: These are updated regularly, though it is impossible to give a hard timeline.

Webmaster: Do Google tools help a site’s ranking?

Google Expert: Hi Gordy! The most important thing to focus on is the quality of your site and the content that you provide for users

Webmaster: With the increasing amount of sites using nofollow tags. Is google looking at those links and taking anything away, like anchor text?

Google Expert: We ignore links that have the rel=nofollow microformat.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: You can wait for Google to figure it out. You don’t need to use the URL removal tool unless your removal is urgent.

Webmaster: i there a way to have a google person look over your site and see whats wrong with it?

Google Expert: Hi Brian,

Google Expert: 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 (:

Webmaster: WHY are rankings fluctuating by the minute sometimes????

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: You can have bad sitelinks removed in your Webmaster Tools account & give general feedback while doing that.

Webmaster: does adsense lead to better indexing and rank? Most of trip advsior’s pages are really thin content Google ads.

Google Expert: The presence of adsense is not a factor in ranking.

Webmaster: Google read correctly ajax sites?

Google Expert: Hi Carlos, please see our blog on ajax/flash http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/11/spiders-view-of-web-20.html

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: Our search results are updated all the time! The pagerank in the toolbar however is only updated a few times a year.

Webmaster: Does removing your site’s low value pages from the index help the other pages rank better?

Google Expert: 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.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: For Google–nope… but you may want to put it there anyway for other robots who may be interested.

Webmaster: Thoughts on the strength of DMOZ?

Google Expert: If you can get a DMOZ link it’s helpful, but there’s no special “DMOZ boost” or anything like that.

Webmaster: Is data and information that is sent Via RSS given preference over content that has been discovered by Googlebot?

Google Expert: We normally crawl normal/static web pages. Most users don’t want RSS to show up in their search results at all.

Webmaster: Under webmaster the crawl rate trails by how many days on average?

Google Expert: The graph is usually fairly up to date, though the labels might be slightly off to the side.

Webmaster: Is there a review process related to reviews in personalized search, i have reviewed local businesses then did not see those reviews posted

Google Expert: We use data from various sources, but it might take some time for it to propogate to us.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: 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).

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: We pull this data from only a few sources, I’m not aware of ways to import it directly from your website.

Webmaster: 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?

Google Expert: Hey Geoff – check out our recent blog post about best practices when moving a site:

Google Expert:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html

Webmaster: Webmaster: 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

Google Expert:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=8524

You can also visit Search Engine Roundtable for full coverage.

Author

Navneet Kaushal is the Editor-in-Chief of PageTraffic Buzz. A leading search strategist, Navneet helps clients maintain an edge in search engines and the online media. Navneet is also the CEO of SEO Services company PageTraffic which is one of the leading search marketing company in Asia.