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You Got Problems and Google Knows It!
By Matt Keough | March 14, 2008
There are endless SEO philosophical debates on Sphinn, Twitter, various forums and virtual water coolers about how much you should listen to Google. I'm in the camp that says we should listen closely to what they say, observe what we can about their actions and always keep in mind that they will ALWAYS act in their own self interest. In other words, if the "Jump!" edict is issued, it is wise to look at where you might land before you ask "How high?".
With that soft disclaimer, let's look at an instance where it makes perfect sense to listen to Google; when they tell you about problems on your website.
Recently, they announced that they will generate messages about problems to be retrieved at Webmaster Central, even before you verify. This is far better than trying to circumvent inevitable phishing schemes that would follow email outreach to webmaster@domain.com attempts.
Webmaster Central verification will allow you to see feedback from Google in areas of crawl problems, what the Google crawlers see, the text in links from other sites. It goes on and on.
One area I'd like to point out is the non-indexable content category. I usually try to keep most of my content indexable. However, I was able to take off my SEO hat for the weekend recently and threw a flash tease page on a friend's website. It was very refreshing. Soon I saw in the content analysis section a warning about non-indexable flash content. The other content they might report here include video or images. Because I really didn't care about the SEO impact of the splash page, I made no effort to correct it.
According to the Webmaster Central help, the other content problems they choose to report:
Data that may be included on this page includes:
* Title problems: Potential problems with the title tag on your pages, such as missing or repeated page titles.
* Meta description problems: Potential problems with duplicate or otherwise problematic meta descriptions.
* Non-indexable content: Pages containing non-indexable content, such as Flash files, video, or images.
As I stated earlier, I'm not suggesting that you spend every ounce of energy making certain that Google doesn't have any problems to report. There are many variables that you have to consider. But you would be a fool to not even listen to what they have to say.
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March 18th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Why would Google bother talking if they didn’t want you to listen? Think about it.
March 24th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
It is in Google’s best interest to have webmasters looking at crawl problems as well as content duplication, as well as many other data points in Webmaster Tools.
It is up to the individual website owners how many resources they will devote to making the perfect picture for Google.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I like Google’s attitude. Given their size, it sure make sme wonder why it takes them so long to provide extra value. Nice piece.