Nobody likes to duplicate effort. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s a fact of life. If you want to use Google Analytics, you need to add a JavaScript tracking code to your pages. When you’re ready to verify ownership of your site in other Google products (such as Webmaster Tools ), you have to add a meta tag, HTML file or DNS record to your site. They’re very similar tasks, but also completely independent. Until today. You can now use a Google Analytics JavaScript snippet to verify ownership of your website , which is the start of using the rich information about your organic ranking and organic traffic available in Webmaster Tools. If you already have Google Analytics set up, verifying ownership is as simple as clicking a button. This only works with the newer asynchronous Analytics JavaScript , so if you haven’t migrated yet, now is a great time. If you haven’t set up Google Analytics or verified yet, go ahead and set up Google Analytics first, then come verify ownership of your site. It’ll save you a little time — who doesn’t like that? Just as with all of Google Webmaster Tools’ other verification methods, the Google Analytics JavaScript needs to stay in place on your site, or your verification will expire. You also need to remain an administrator on the Google Analytics account associated with the JavaScript snippet. Don’t forget that once you’ve verified ownership, you can add other verified owners in Webmaster Tools (not Google Analytics) quickly and easily through the Verification Details page. There’s no need for each owner to manually verify ownership. More effort and time saved! Webmaster Central has also introduced an improved interface for verification. The new verification page gives you more information about each verification method. In some cases, we can now provide detailed instructions about how to complete verification with your specific domain registrar or provider. If your provider is included, there’s no need to dig through their documentation to figure out how to add a verification DNS record — the new interface will walk you through it. The time you save using these new verification features might not be enough to let you take up a new hobby, but we hope it makes the verification process a little bit more pleasant. Please visit the Webmaster Help Forum if you have any questions. And much thanks to the Webmaster Central team for launching this feature. If you’re not already, make sure to read their informative blog . It’s a must for any site owner. Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team, and Sean Harding, Webmaster Central Team

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New Verification Integration With Asynch

Webmaster Level: All You can now check your Video Sitemap for even more errors right in Webmaster Tools ! It’s a new Labs feature to signal issues in your Video Sitemap such as: URLs disallowed by robots.txt Thumbnail size errors (160×120px is ideal. Anything smaller than 90×50 will be rejected.) Video Sitemaps help us to better crawl and extract information about your videos, so we can appropriately feature them in search results. Totally new to Video Sitemaps? Check out the Video Sitemaps center for more information. Otherwise, take a look at this new Labs feature in Webmaster Tools. Written by Jackie Lai, Video Search Team

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To err is human, Video Sitemap feedback is divine!

We’re kicking off June with the start of a new round of webmaster Q&A on the Webmaster Central YouTube channel . You submitted and voted on questions for Matt Cutts to answer, and Matt sat in the studio for a full day sharing advice for webmasters. For those of you who watch each video (and who doesn’t?), we’ve worked hard to keep things interesting. Not only did Matt wear different colored shirts, we changed the backgrounds as well! Just don’t submit any screen grabs to We Have Lasers , okay? To get you started, here’s the first video, which addresses a question about geographic targeting in Webmaster Tools: We’ll be posting links to new videos as they’re posted on our Twitter account , so follow us there or subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified of new answers. Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team

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Grab bag videos are back!

by Manoj Jasra Last week I caught up with Maile Ohye, Senior Developer Programs Engineer at Google (on the Webmaster Tools team). Maile will be keynoting SES Toronto in a couple of weeks with a presentation titled: Inside Google Webmaster Central. I was able to get a sneak peak on some of the topics from that upcoming session in my chat with Maile - read more about it below: [Manoj]: Can you talk a little bit about the benefits of the latest features, such as DNS record update and clicks/avg. position? [Maile Ohye]: Sure, Manoj, thanks for asking. The schedule for our DNS verification we helped webmasters more easily verify ownership of subdomains in Webmaster Tools. Rather than individually verify www.example.com, blog.example.com, and shopping.example.com, you can add one line to you DNS record and all associated sites/subdomains are verified at once. We expect this feature to be most helpful to webmasters of larger sites. In our improved Search queries , you can view data from not just web search, but also from other properties like images, mobile, and smartphone queries. And you can tailor the information to originate from various countries, like the United Kingdom or Japan. Features like Search queries’ replay the conversation about a topic. I think this may be the only searchable, replay-able, public archive of tweets. [Manoj]: What feature of Webmaster tools is your favorite? [Maile Ohye]: Picking a favorite feature is pretty difficult for me. It’s like picking my favorite niece (I love them all!). One feature I definitely feel goes under-recognized, though, is HTML suggestions. HTML suggestions tells you what pages have duplicate

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Insight Into Webmaster Tools - A Chat with Google’s Maile Ohye

Webmaster Level: All In this final installation in our URL removal series, let’s talk about following up on your removal requests, as well as when not to use Google’s URL removal tool. If you haven’t already, I recommend reading the previous posts in this series: Part I: Removing URLs & directories Part II: Removing & updating cached content Part III: Removing content you don’t own Companion post: Managing what information is available about you online Understanding the status of your requests Once you’ve submitted a removal request, it will appear in your list of requests. You can check the status of your requests at any time to see whether the content has been removed, or whether the request is still or pending or was denied. If a request was denied, you should see a “Learn more” link next to it explaining why that particular request was denied. Since different types of removals have different requirements, the reason why a particular request was denied can vary. The “Learn more” link should help you figure out what you need to change in order to make your request successful. For example, you may need to change the URL in question so that it meets the requirements for the type of removal you requested; or, if you can’t do that, you may need to request a different type of removal (one whose requirements your URL currently meets). If a request has been marked “Removed” but you still see that content in search results, check the following: Is the URL that’s appearing in search results the exact same URL that you submitted for removal? It’s fairly common for the same, or similar, content to appear on multiple URLs on a site. You may have successfully removed one URL, but still see others containing that same content.     Solution: Request removal of the other URL(s) in question. See this article for help. Keep in mind that URLs are case sensitive , so requesting removal of http://www.example.com/embarrassingstuff.html is not the same as requesting removal of http://www.example.com/EmbarrassingStuff.html     Solution: Request removal of the exact URL(s) that appear in search results, including the same capitalization. See this article for help. When a request is marked “Removed,” that can mean different things depending on what type of request you submitted. If you requested removal of an entire URL, then “Removed” should mean that that entire URL no longer appears in our search results. If you requested removal of the cached copy of a URL, “Removed” means that the cached copy has been removed and will no longer appear in search results; but the URL itself may still appear.     Solution: Double-check what type of removal you requested by looking at the “Removal Type” column. If you requested a cache removal but you want the entire URL gone, make sure the URL meets the requirements for complete removal and then file a new request for complete removal of the URL. When not to use the URL removal tool To clean up cruft , like old pages that 404. The tool is intended for URLs that urgently need to be removed, such as confidential data that was accidentally exposed. If you recently made changes to your site and just have some outdated URLs in the index, Google’s crawlers will see this as we recrawl your URLs, and those pages will naturally drop out of our search results over time. There’s no need to request an urgent removal through this tool. To remove crawl errors from your Webmaster Tools account. The removal tool removes URLs from Google’s search results, not from your Webmaster Tools account. There’s currently no way for you to manually remove URLs from this report; they will drop out naturally over time as we stop crawling URLs that repeatedly 404. To “start from scratch” with your site. If you’re worried that your site may have a penalty, or you want to “start from scratch” after purchasing a domain from someone else, we don’t recommend trying to use the URL removal tool to remove your entire site and then “start over.” Search engines gather a lot of information from other sites (such as who links to you, or what words they use to describe your site) and use this to help understand your site. Even if we could remove everything we currently know about your site, a lot of it would come back exactly the same once we’d recrawled all the other sites that help us understand your site and put it in context. If you’re worried that your domain has some bad history, we recommend filing a reconsideration request letting us know what you’re worried about and what has changed (such as that you’ve acquired the domain from someone else, or that you’ve changed certain aspects of your site). To take your site “offline” after hacking. If your site was hacked and you want to get rid of bad URLs that got indexed, you can use the URL removal tool to remove any new URLs that the hacker created, e.g., http://www.example.com/buy-cheap-cialis-skq3w598.html . But we don’t recommend removing your entire site, or removing URLs that you’ll eventually want indexed; instead, simply clean up the hacking and let us recrawl your site so that we can reindex the new, cleaned-up content as soon as possible. This article contains more details on how to deal with hacking. To get the right “version” of your site indexed. When a request to remove https ://www.example.com/tattoo.html is accepted, http ://www.example.com/tattoo.html is also removed. The same is true of the www and non-www versions of your URL or site. This is because the same content is often available at each of these URLs and we realize that most webmasters and searchers don’t want these duplicates appearing in search results. In short, the URL removal tool should not be used as a canonicalization tool. It won’t keep your favorite version, it’ll remove all versions (http/https and www/non-www) of a URL. We hope this series has answered your questions about removing content from Google’s search results, and helped you troubleshoot any issues that may arise. Join us in our Help Forum if you still have questions. Posted by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst

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URL removal explained, Part IV: Tracking your requests & what not to remove

by Stoney deGeyter Many people are afraid of Google’s seemingly “big brother” approach to the web. Google appears to keep digging their hands further and further into our lives, collecting data and using in ways that some may not trust as being completely benevolent. While I have some concerns about Google’s approach to collecting data from our websites, I’m also a big fan some of the tools Google offers web developers and site managers. Google Webmaster Tools is one of the tools that I really like and which can be very helpful to site owners and webmasters to figure out what problems their site has, fix potential errors, and provide Google some feedback on how our sites should be treated. For the most part, the information provided to webmasters through Webmaster Tools is stuff that Google already knows. They collect this data whenever they crawl your website. Webmaster Tools just provides a way for us to see our website through Google-tinted glasses. Essentially, Webmaster tools provides you with a window into the soul of your website, and gives you an opportunity to make your site more search engine friendly. This series of articles will cover setting up your site in webmaster tools and the four main sections provided to analyze and review site issues. Part I: Setting Up a Site Part II: Site configuration Part III: Your site on the web Part IV: Your site on the web (continued) Part V: Diagnostics Part VI: Labs Setting Up a Site To use Google’s Webmaster Tools, you first need to have a Google account. Once you have your Google account set up then simply login and go to the Webmaster Tools home page . Here you can add as many websites as you are currently managing. I like to add both the www. version and non-www. version of the site’s URL. This ensures that I get all the relevant stats for the site in questions, as you can often get different results between the two URLs. Verify Ownership Once you’ve added your site(s) you’ll be given the opportunity to verify that you are the owner/manager of that site. There are two ways to verify. 1) File Upload: Google will give you an .html file that you can upload to your root directory. 2) Meta Tag: Google will give you a meta tag that you place between the < head > < /head > tags of your home page. Select which method you prefer, add or upload the required information, then come back to Webmaster tools and hit “verify”. You also have the option of adding “owners” or users to the site by going back to the home page and clicking the appropriate link on the far right. Then click “Add a user” and add the Google account email address of the person you want to include. When Google confirms that the information is in place you’re all set. You’ll want to keep that file or meta tag in place because Google will occasionally go back to re-verify it’s still there. If it’s not then you lose your access to this website in Webmaster Tools. Not to worry, though, you can get access by re-uploading the data again. Dashboard When you click into your site from the Webmaster Tools home page you’re taken to that site’s dashboard. From here you can get a quick overview of your site stats, yada yada, yada. You need to click on the navigation on the left (or the “more” links) to get to the full details. We’ll go into each of these areas over the next five posts in this series. But for now, get your site set up and start browsing around. Learn more about these sections of Google Webmaster Tools Part I: Setting Up a Site Part II: Site configuration Part III: Your site on the web Part IV: Your site on the web (continued) Part V: Diagnostics Part VI: Labs Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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SEO With Google Webmaster Tools - Part 1: Setting Up a Site

Webmaster Level: All The single best way to make Google aware of all your videos on your website is to create and maintain a Video Sitemap . Video Sitemaps provide Google with essential information about your videos, including the URLs for the pages where the videos can be found, the titles of the videos, keywords, thumbnail images, durations, and other information. The Sitemap also allows you to define the period of time for which each video will be available. This is particularly useful for content that has explicit viewing windows, so that we can remove the content from our index when it expires. Once your Sitemap is created, you can can submit the URL of the Sitemap file in Google Webmaster Tools or through your robots.txt file . Once we have indexed a video, it may appear in our web search results in what we call a Video Onebox (a cluster of videos related to the queried topic) and in our video search property, Google Videos . A video result is immediately recognizable by its thumbnail, duration, and a description. As an example, this is what a video result from CNN.com looks like on Google: We encourage those of you with videos to submit Video Sitemaps and to keep them updated with your new content. Please also visit our recently updated Video Sitemap Help Center , and utilize our Sitemap Help Forum . If you’ve submitted a Video Sitemap file via Webmaster Tools and want to share your experiences or problems, you can do so here . Posted by Nelson Lee, Product Manager Video Search

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Help Google index your videos

Webmaster Level: All Today, as announced on the Official Google Blog, we’ve taken an additional step to improve access to Google webmaster services. Parallels , one of the leading providers of control panel software to hosting companies, has integrated Google Services for Websites into Parallels Plesk Panel , used by millions of website owners globally to manage their websites. If you use Plesk for managing your hosting and website services, you can easily configure Webmaster Tools, Custom Search, Site Search, Web Elements and AdSense for your website right from within Plesk. Since Plesk knows what domains you own, it automatically registers your domains to Webmaster Tools and allows you to automatically login to the Webmaster Tools console to verify your sites, as shown below. We’re always trying to make our tools easier to use and easier to access. Since you’re probably visiting your hosting control panel on a regular basis, we hope that you find this integration convenient. If you have feedback please let us know in the Webmaster Forum . Posted by Jonathan Simon, Webmaster Trends Analyst

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Webmasters - configure Google services at your hosting panel

Webmaster Level: All Sitemaps are an invaluable resource for search engines. They can highlight the important content on a site and allow crawlers to quickly discover it. Images are an important element of many sites and search engines could equally benefit from knowing which images you consider important. This is particularly true for images that are only accessible via JavaScript forms, or for pages that contain many images but only some of which are integral to the page content. Now you can use a Sitemaps extension to provide Google with exactly this information. For each URL you list in your Sitemap, you can add additional information about important images that exist on that page. You don’t need to create a new Sitemap, you can just add information on images to the Sitemap you already use. Adding images to your Sitemaps is easy. Simply follow the instructions in the Webmaster Tools Help Center or refer to the example below:            http://example.com/sample.html               http://example.com/image.jpg         We index billions of images and see hundreds of millions of image-related queries each day. To take advantage of that traffic most effectively, take a moment to update your Sitemap file with information on the images from your site. Let us know in the Sitemaps forum if you have any questions. Posted by Alkis Evlogimenos, Software Engineer

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Adding Images to your Sitemaps

Webmaster Level: Advanced A few weeks ago, we introduced a new way of verifying site ownership , making it easy to share verified ownership of a site with another person. This week, we bring you another new way to verify. Verification by DNS record allows you to become a verified owner of an entire domain (and all of the sites within that domain) at once. It also provides an alternative way to verify for folks who struggle with the existing HTML file or meta tag methods. I like to explain things by walking through an example, so let’s try using the new verification method right now. For the sake of this example, we’ll say I own the domain example.com . I have several websites under example.com , including http://www.example.com/ , http://blog.example.com/ and http://beta.example.com/ . I could individually verify ownership of each of those sites using the meta tag or HTML file method. But that means I’d need to go through the verification process three times, and if I wanted to add http://customers.example.com/ , I’d need to do it a fourth time. DNS record verification gives me a better way! First I’ll add example.com to my account, either in Webmaster Tools or directly on the Verification Home page . On the verification page, I select the “Add a DNS record” verification method, and follow the instructions to add the specified TXT record to my domain’s DNS configuration. When I click “Verify,” Google will check for the TXT record, and if it’s present, I’ll be a verified owner of example.com and any associated websites and subdomains. Now I can use any of those sites in Webmaster Tools and other verification-enabled Google products without having to verify ownership of them individually. If you try DNS record verification and it doesn’t work right away, don’t despair! Sometimes DNS records take a while to make their way across the Internet, so Google may not see them immediately. Make sure you’ve added the record exactly as it’s shown on the verification page. We’ll periodically check, and when we find the record we’ll make you a verified owner without any further action from you. DNS record verification isn’t for everyone—if you don’t understand DNS configuration, we recommend you continue to use the HTML file and meta tag methods. But for advanced users, this is a powerful new option for verifying ownership of your sites. As always, please visit the Webmaster Help Forum if you have any questions. Posted by Sean Harding, Software Engineer

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DNS Verification FTW