The Webmaster Central is another attempt at improving the communication between the search engine and webmasters looking for ways of improving its standing in search engine results.
The blog says that:
Unfortunately — though we’ve had the pleasure of chatting with many of you in a variety of forums, around the blogosphere, and at many conferences across the world — we simply haven’t been able to interact with every one of you. So we’re excited to announce our new Google Webmaster Central, which enables us to have productive conversations with many more of you, all the time.
Some may question the motivation behind such a move. Does Google try to move the Google related discussion over to its own turf, gaining a better control of it that way?
It is interesting to note that only one day later the Yahoo! Search Blog commented upon its latest search index update, announcing that:
We are trying to connect with you more directly and enrich our interaction even further through Site Explorer. Please authenticate your site in Site Explorer and join the conversation on the Site Explorer forum.
So there you go, not only Google, but Yahoo! as well invites webmasters to discuss the occult art of search engine optimization at their own domains.
Obviously, if Google and Yahoo! employees stop taking part in other search engine forum discussions, like on Webmaster World and Search Engine Watch forums, there would be reason to worry.
Still, we believe these are exactly what the search engines say they are: forums and sites that might bring in additional information of relevance to webmasters.
Here is a short summary of what the two webmaster centrals have to offer:
1. A link to the Yahoo! Search Blog (We guess they have reckoned there is no need for a separate blog for webmasters).
2. Search Help (Like Google, Yahoo! has gathered all relevant help pages in one spot).
3. Search Content Guidelines — in essence a discussion of what Yahoo! considers “good stuff” and what it considers spam.
4. A form for reporting spam. This is how you can bring down your competitor. Report any spammy techniques they may use and see their rankings drop into oblivion. But remember: They can do the same to you!
5. Support Feedback form. This is the form you use when your competitor has arrested you for spam and you have to beg Yahoo! for forgiveness. You may also use it to complain about Yahoo’s spiders, get help in removing pages from their index, copyright issues and more.
6. There is also a separate suggestion form where you can make suggestions for improvement and more.
7. The Yahoo! Site Explorer lets you analyse the standing of your own site (or that of your rivals). This is a popular tool among search engine marketers as it gives a much more accurate picture of your number of back-links than Google. Google’s search engine is totally unreliable in this respect. If you sign in and add a small text file to your site’s server, you may also use this service to find out if Yahoo! is able to find your site. You may also give it the URL of your RSS feed, helping Yahoo’s spiders to index your new pages.
8. And finally, there is a submit page, which gives you information on how to submit your site for free, the pay per click text ad programme and Yahoo’s Search Submit Express (where you can pay Yahoo! to do something they should do for free anyway, namely index your pages).
It should be noted that these are not all new features. However, these search engines are now trying to give the various help pages and webmaster tools a more coherent interface, making it easier for readers to find the relevant information.
MSN and Ask
Moreover, even though MSN and Ask have no similar “webmaster centrals”, they do provide much of the same information.
For a long time people have wanted the ability to search for terms and phrases on the web using non-letter (A-Z) characters. Put another way, searching using non-alphanumeric characters.
Well the time has come here at Ask.com and we've started to roll-out some what we hope are useful and practical examples.
We now offer a growing list of emoticons (aka smileys) that can be found by simply typing the smiley into the search box. Look for the definition in a Smart Answer box at the top of web results page.
Of course, each Smart Answer also includes links straight to a dictionary for more emoticons and other net terms. We even offer a link to learn more about IM ettiqutte.
It's been quite some time since we last had an "in conversation with" feature (but don't worry, there are more in the pipeline).
I'm particularly pleased (and honoured) with this one. Not only did I get to speak with Jim Lanzone, Senior Vice President, Search Properties at Jeeves. I also got to speak to Apostolos Gerasoulis, founder of the Teoma search engine (which powers Ask Jeeves) and former Professor of Computer Science at Rutgers University.
Anyone who reads my scribbling in this and other online publications will be aware that, I've long been a great admirer of the work of Apostolos Gerasoulis.
Of Greek origin, he is regarded as one of the leading figures in the field of information retrieval on the web. His background is in research on the processing of large data sets. And with the web being the largest data set there is - he has been able to look at it from a different perspective, enabling him to solve a problem in web search which had confounded many.
There are two main link-based algorithms which have been developed in the web research community. Many know of PageRank at Google, as it has been so visible there. The other is HITS (Hyperlink Induced Topic Search) an algorithm developed by foremost computer scientist Jon Kleinberg.
If you don't know the difference between the two and the problem which so hindered the Kleinberg algorithm, then some of this interview may not make sense. It's pretty much a non scientific conversation. However, a little background is probably required to get a total understanding, as there are certain points where an assumption of the reader's prior knowledge is made.
So, you may wish to first read a paper I wrote on the subject of the two algorithms and what set the Kleinberg algorithm apart. Again I wrote this as a non scientific paper in order to simply get the essentials across.
It's not a long read and many people have told me that it has been very useful in, not just helping them understand more about the Kleinberg algorithm, but generally speaking, why links are so important in search engine marketing.
Does Google use PageRank? No says Apostolos. Have they created some kind of local implementation based on anchor text? Yes says Apostolos.
In fact, when I heard that opinion, it really made me think that, what I wrote about Google, perhaps, moving towards keyword dependant results following the Florida episode, may have a little more substance.
And the number of times that Apostolos mentions that search is not just about the algorithm, "it's about the infrastructure" has me thinking that my opinion about Google's "dark fiber" dabbling may, in part, also be about that.
Here's another take away, from Jim, this time.
In this business we talk about up to 95% of all traffic on the web coming from search (that's an arbitrary figure as I've seen so many variations).
However, I was very surprised when Jim told me that 80% of all searches are non commercial! I said: "At Jeeves?" He said: "on the web!"
So when I made my little complaint about the 20 AdWords listings we tend to see before the web results at Jeeves, he was able to point out that 80% percent of search results don't have them!
And what's the future of search. Is it still about links? Actually, the future is more about data on users. Find out about the web-galaxy developed by us (the web page makers) and the user-web-galaxy controlled by the search engines. And the link we need to create between them.
If you haven't read one of these features before, I should explain that they are virtually uncut, in detail, verbatim transcripts of my conversations, which are part of the research for my book.
Subscribers to e-marketing-news are the only people to receive exclusive copies.
Usually they are face-to-face, but this one had to take place as a conference call. And as ever, it has everything… including the usual interruptions!!
If you're attending SES New York, I look forward to seeing you there.
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Google and Yahoo! add webmaster support portals, with help files, blogs, discussion forums and tools.
