Wednesday, May 11, 2011 at 9:09 AM
We’re pleased to introduce the Google Webmaster Team as contributors to the Webmaster Central Blog. As the team responsible for tens of thousands of Google’s informational web pages, they’re here to offer tips and advice based on their experiences as hands-on webmasters.
Back in the 1990s, anyone who maintained a website called themselves a “webmaster” regardless of whether they were a designer, developer, author, system administrator, or someone who had just stumbled across GeoCities and created their first web page. As the technologies changed over the years, so did the roles and skills of those managing websites.
Around 20 years after the word was first used, we still refer to ourselves as the Google Webmaster Team because it’s the only term that really covers the wide variety of roles that we have on our team. Although most of us have solid knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other web technologies, we also have specialists in design, development, user experience, information architecture, system administration, and project management.
Part of the Google Webmaster Team, Mountain View
In contrast to the Google Webmaster Central Team—which mainly focuses on helping webmasters outside of Google understand web search and how things like crawling and indexing affect their sites—our team is responsible for designing, implementing, optimizing and maintaining Google’s corporate pages, informational product pages, landing pages for marketing campaigns, and our error page. Our team also develops internal tools to increase our productivity and help to maintain the thousands of HTML pages that we own.
We’re working hard to follow, challenge and evolve best practices and web standards to ensure that all our new pages are produced to the highest quality and provide the best user experience, and we’re constantly evaluating and updating our legacy pages to ensure their deprecated HTML isn’t just left to rot.
We want to share our work and experiences with other webmasters, so we recently launched our @GoogleWebTeam account on Twitter to keep our followers updated on the latest news about our projects, web standards, and anything else which may be of interest to other webmasters, web designers and web developers. We’ll be posting here on the Webmaster Central Blog when we want to share anything longer than 140 characters.
Before we share more details about our processes and experiences, please let us know if there’s anything you’d like us to specifically cover by leaving a comment here or by tweeting @GoogleWebTeam.
28 comments:
Hi folks,
finally some faces behind nicks. Greetings from Croatia
More discussions about the Site Performance feature. Google anyways crawls the pages, takes snapshots from the entire web, so why not producing reliable Site Performance data?
I have been using Google for years. For years you have randomly offered cute variations on the Google-block-letter logo that pop up on certain days ... flowers, balloons, animal scenes. They have all been quite entertaining and have gotten my attention for a moment. But TODAY. TODAY was different. You posted an animated watercolor (?) ... very Jules Feiffer-like ... of a woman dancing. She rocked in her shroud in her seat. She made you look. And then she sprung up, shed her shroud, and emerged. Perhaps a political statement? Perhaps not? Lovely, intriguing, absolutely mesmerizing. Thank you for grabbing me fully.
Super ton cycle !
Would love to see some comments on mobile browser detection across so different devices running Andriod?
Hey Tony, nice to see you around here :)
I'd like to hear about some of your dev admin tasks like: do you use SCRUM, how do you manage versions and deployments, manage coding standards, how do you use source control, automated testing, continuous integration, ... you get the idea. The stuff you do to keep development predictable and running smoothly. Thanks for sharing.
You guys rock. Keep up the great work!
Hi, i'm new to goole webmaster, glad to share the search engine.
How do we deal with someone clicking our adsense ads many times intentionally ?
Thank you for the great job done already. Especially Google news with translate opened up a Wonderland. I haven't yet figured out how to browse the main headlines by continents in one language with your tool, but that would give Alice a new pair of red shoes.
visit my blog
Yello people! Nice pic, so sunny and happy!
This is just a suggestion in encouraging more clients and viewers. I have been a client of Yahoo news for decades already... and just this lately Yahoo made a marketing mistake lately. Countless Yahoo news clients were complaining against this new Show default to Highest Rating, and Yahoo web management with incompetence and arrogance have not reacted favorably to such operational nuisance and even did not provide option which a client may prefer…
Actually frankly speaking, I preferred yahoo news pages because their format favors dynamic interactions among readers…This format provide a lively but production global comments and interactions… making it an interesting platform for global debate…and an important source for sizing up global sentiment.
If Google can provide that same opportunity and social environment definitely I, with the rest of those disgusted with present Yahoo management will move on to Google News.
For this matter I challenge Google to act and ‘strike the iron while its hot’… while yahoo management is still on their insolent stage… and many clients are profusely angry of their arrogant attitude…
TY
This is just a suggestion in encouraging more clients and viewers. I have been a client of Yahoo news for decades already... and just this lately Yahoo made a terrible marketing blunder. Countless Yahoo news clients were complaining against this new Show default to Highest Rating, and Yahoo web management with incompetence and arrogance have not reacted favorably to such operational nuisance and even did not provide show option which a client may prefer…
Frankly speaking, as of this moment I preferred yahoo news pages because their format favors dynamic interactions among readers… and worst there is no other choices so far.
This format provide a lively but productive global comments and interactions… making it an interesting platform for global debate…and an a source for sizing-up global sentiment.
If Google can provide that same opportunity and social environment, definitely I, with the rest of those disgusted with present Yahoo management will move on to Google News.
For this matter I challenge Google to act and ‘strike the iron while its hot’… while yahoo management is still on their insolence… and many clients are profusely angry of their arrogant attitude…
TY
By the way where is the 'Sign Out' button? I wished I can see one.
Nobody wearing 'Engineering or Security' red tops - that's good.
(1980's joke)
Nice to meet the webmaster team. I would personally love to see more in the way of page speed data coming out of WMT. Mine's not updated since Apr 26th, when it was alarmingly high. Generally prompt and useful insights into how Google is viewing my site would be wonderful.
More Google staff in the webmaster help forums would also be beneficial, although I can see that's a gargantuan task. I'm reluctant to post about concerns there, as I find many of the top contributors rude and abrasive, with little time for novices or interested parties attempting to make sense of google's guidelines as they try to create useful, user-driven sites without killing their search engine position - just some thoughts!
I have a blog called http://www.newtechtips.org/. Before 9th of May 2011, I got 56.78% visits from google organic search. But I don't know why after 10th May onward I just got 15.35% visits from organic search.
I used webmaster reconsideration tool and inform google about this issue. But they reply me that my site is working fine and no issue found.
I couldn’t find out the issue for this bad ranking. can you please help me sort out this issue.
Just follow your guys on twitter, a cool idea
Hey guys, thanks for all the good work
This is another follow up regarding suggestions to update you reaction windows...
Many of the news pages connected by Google have their respective comment boxes... However many of these are lacking in providing adequate responses spaces...An that they have various formats.. These carry uncomfort or additional adjustment burden to the prospective clients…
How I wished Google provides its own response of comment window to have standard format... that clients count develop easily familiarity to the reaction system or process...
Giving adequate comfort to the prospective participant….
I have been attempting lately to participate in the news reactions in the Google newspages but everytime I open another page, I felt I am always a stranger because each page may have its own format... quite time and effort consuming to simply familiarize...
This strongly discourages me to open more or another pages...
There are so many thousands of clients that subscribe to the Yahoo news not simply to get news updates but having a) 'the fun' of conversing with all other clients through news comments and reactions... and b) primarily to answer to the need to present arguments or (counter arguments) to the latest comments to find truthful balance on the issues concerned... Otherwise misconception, untruth, or distorted information were allowed to spread all over the world…(a sin of omission to the moralists)…
This makes reply a social responsibility or moral obligation of every participant... and
Thus, participation would become a must…
The Yahoo newpages comments or reaction windows have already progressed into form of 'public intellectual cafe' (or forum) where people all over the world converge and exchange personal views over news issues... this promotes a healthy dialogue among demographic sector and a rich resource for politicians to measure global or public sentiment over certain issues...
This is very important basis for the Google to expand the quality of their news services - by providing standard and setup flexible reaction windows for clients like us...
If Google can provide a much better configuration (unlike the complaints over the present incompetence of Yahoo management) they have the potential to develop their news pages as global political, social, or intellectual forum…
Dereck Dodson, World fortune Owner
As the Owner and "Formulator" of Android and Google I am ashamed of Googles lack of "Fevered Enthusiasm" in keeping the "Leviathan" that is Android Market "untouchable" in the Tech Market. No offense, but thats why Swizterland gets the Zillion Dollar Plus Corporations! All I see in the news is "Bad" Android/Google Press.If anyone of you good people could get this message to my Tech People Please Do!
Contact Phoenix Technologies and have them outfit you with a "Real Registry"! That will fix all the problems "Silence" the Media and all those Tech Licensee's that are trying to undermind my Brand!
Don't waste "R & D" Money when bigger problems like this are present!
An editor of by firm showed me this but I'm somewhat sceptical of the value.
Hypothetically - I'm a spammer and I want to make my chicken scratched scrapings of the web look legitimate so I add Google's authorship markup and now I look like Wolf Blitzer.
Am I to understand Google can tell a legit author from a fake author? ... or is this just wishful thinking?
I would love to know why Google offers such a poor user experience for ex-pats travelling to foreign countries.
I live in Hong Kong and the majority of Google pages I visit for the first time are presented in Chinese with no language switcher option.
This makes for a very insulting and extremely poor user experience, especially as adding a language switcher option is so easy and Google already has all the pages in English anyway.
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