Webmaster questions on Google

Translation and summary of two round tables, where webmasters ask all questions about site optimization to improve the position in search results. Responses from Google experts, including Matt Cutts.
The second was held on the Moderator service, which allowed Internet users to vote for questions.

Backlinks

You recently removed this mention in the guides: "Submit your site to reference directories such as Dmoz and Yahoo." Does this mean that such connections will no longer matter in the future?

Matt Cutts: There will always be chances that we will no longer take into account links from catalogs in the future.
What we saw was that novice webmasters, seeing this repeated, exposed their site to multiple directories, even if they were of poor quality. We have not changed anything in the weight of these links, but removed this mention.

Do the positioning of backlinks of other sites of the same person help or fine?

Matt Cutts: I think one company's backlinks fall into two camps. You have a case where we have very few sites, and link them to each other in the sense.
In another case, webmasters have 1000 to 2000 interconnected areas. I absolutely do not recommend it.

Hey Scott, I don't want to make you work, but it depends a little bit on the situation. I would not want these links to help or penalize your positioning if they are made for the user.
If your sports site links your camping site, it's good for visitors. This can only improve your ranking.
If your sites are linked only as a crossword puzzle or to increase the number of links, this is unlikely to help your positioning or users.
Put yourself in the shoes of users and ask yourself what's good for them. Cheers!

Until recently (in about the last six months) it was possible to have a good position submitting an article to the article catalog (provided that it is almost unique), and this seems to be no longer the case. Will links to these sites depreciate? (NDT: digg-like or press releases).

Matt Cutts: In my experience, no article catalog is of high quality. Sometimes you can find a ton of locally copied items there, and it's hard to find the original on the site. The user experience on these sites can also be negative. We see how they sometimes end up on uninteresting pages.
If you want to improve your reputation and make a statement, the best you can do is not in the article catalogue. Sometimes it is better to declare yourself a little better than to submit a ton of links for this.

What importance is attached to backlinks on social networks and blogs?

Nathan Jay: I will treat social sites and blogs the same way I treat other sites.

If my A site links my B site and B links A, will I be fined? Do link strategies work?

Jonathan: Participation in link networks to influence positioning is prohibited by conductors.

Since more than 300 dubious links point to my site, he moved from the first position for his keywords to the second page at best. Does this mass of bad neighborhood connections affect positioning?

Nathan Jay: We do our best to make sure that one site can't hurt another. If you encounter spam, you can report it in the Spam Report.

Tools for Webmasters

Since Google is against positioning management software in SERPs, does Google have plans for a similar service approved by it that webmasters can use?

Matt Cutts: It's something we've talked about before. My idea is that often we care too much about "winning keyword groups" and want the best position to do it, even if it's not the best thing for the site, and to focus on the group, forgetting the rest, which we also position ourselves on, is not a good idea. Monitoring the statistics given by the server gives a good idea of what works in practice.
But it's a query that we know, and I think it would be good if we could offer that for a reasonably limited number of keywords.

Will Webmaster Tools ever give you the ability to separate from the sites that link you, as it exists on Yahoo's Site Explorer?

Matt Cutts: It turns out that we work so hard that one site cannot punish another that we did not provide such an opportunity. We were offered it and thought about it. A special case is when the site owner wants to separate the link package from his site. If you have a bunch of links on your site, viewing them will be very tedious. So that would be a challenge and because we haven't seen the utility for that, we haven't offered it yet.

Update July 2011: Yahoo Site Explorer service! closed this month.

Does Google plan to show us the positioning of keywords in Webmaster Tools?

Susan Moscow: We already do this for a limited number of keywords in the Top Search Queries section. Although we are not used to communicating about our plans, expanding this functionality is certainly an idea proposed to us.

Matt Cutts: Aside from what Susan said, I personally think it would be a good idea.

Is geolocation in Webmaster Tools the same weight as TLD?

Caspar aka Googlarz: Google uses a signal package such as server location and TLD to determine which users may be interested in the content of the site. Geolocation replaces TLD. If you consider the site as a store, it identifies people living nearby as the main customers. Geolocation should not be used to assign a language.

Duplicate happiness

How many domains can point to the same destination before it becomes a problem? More precisely, domain1.com, domain2.com, etc. indicate domain.com who have their own pages...

Mile Ohye: I'm glad I can answer your question, but I'm not sure it duplicates happiness. In your example, domain.com appears to be the only site that hosts content. Companies usually buy erroneous versions of their domain and point in 301 to the correct domain. Can you explain the exact scenario to us?

You claim that you can distinguish between original content and RSS copies, so why is it better to position them than originals?

Top: We do our best to identify copies and find the best URL for a set of content. You have two ways to help us:

If in your content you provide articles or other information that can be syndicated on other sites, include an absolute (rather than relative) link on your site to be identified as the author.
And in case of a spammer site, make a spam report in webmaster tools.

Is the duplicate pleased with the decline in PR?

Yes, multiple links on one page, PR shares.
(An article about duplicate content explains how it can punish a site.)

Site design

How important is the age of the site and the domain for positioning?

Matt Cutts: In most cases, we don't provide the fairest, not the oldest, information. But in some cases, age is a signal, but you cannot make an obsession out of it.

For my optimization, I would like to improve my positioning by removing technical obstacles (starting with dynamic URL parameters), what are the most important fixes to make, and how to measure results with Webmaster Tools?

JonMu: To test the availability of your site, I'm getting you to review it again with a broken links tester. This gives an idea of how robots see your site and indicate where they are looping or finding a duplicate due to URL parameters.

We recently changed our company name. The old estate had good PR, but the new one had very low PR. Is 301 enough to transmit PR?

This is a good and very frequent question. In fact, 301 is the best solution. The topic was discussed on the Googlewebmastercental website.

Can Google be expected to favor sites with valid HTML code? Because, in principle, webmasters who treat code are unlikely to be able to make spam sites.

JohnMu: Since less than 5% of pages are valid according to a study by Opera, it makes no sense for us to disadvantage 95% of other pages.
See Opera page analysis statistics.

Is it true that the fewer links from your site, the more these links affect the sites that receive them (NDT: It is clear that fewer internal links contribute to external links).

JohnMu: PageRank divides between links to a page, but I recommend you don't dwell on it (you can neither measure nor act on it).

Problem with 301 redirects?

The only problem is having multiple redirects for the same page.
Otherwise, this is not a problem even for a long time.

Problem using CMS?

Not if it meets web standards. The main thing is not to have the same title and description for all pages.

Do sub-revenues improve visibility?

No, no more than subdirectories.

Can I regain the penalty area?

In this case, you will need to re-submit the site indicating the change of ownership.

Do sub-revenues compete with an area on results?

Typically, there is a connection between a domain and a subdomain .

Location and Domain

Is general expansion (.com) or countries (.fr) better?

Country extensions are better suited to local research.

Suppose my website is in English and French. Should the English and French versions of the page have different URLs? Another good practice for multilingual site architecture?

Matt Cutts: If you can afford it, use domaine.com and domaine.fr. If this is not possible, think en.domaine.com and fr.domaine.com. Otherwise, domaine.com/en and domaine.com/fr may work.
In Webmaster Tools, you can geolocate a site (and I think subdomains), which can help.

Is localization with a country code (e.g. "fr") recognized as a subdomain (e.g. fr.scriptol.com or france.scriptol.com NdT)?

No, these codes are not recognized. Geolocation tool shall be used.

I have a website in five languages and can't pay for 5 domains. Are 5 subdirectories or 5 subdirectories better?

JonMu: Both stand by each other. If the content is different, I would use subdomains, if not directories, but that's up to you.

Is it true that GWT geolocation only works for shared domains (and not for ccTLD type .fr)?

Getting It Right.

What metats are used for the language: html lang =, meta name = language, meta http-equiv = content-language?

We don't look at them because they often get it wrong. We rely only on content.

Is TLD better than countries or geolocation in GWT?

Both work the same way.

Design

Screen usage: none or left: -999px for availability reduces your positioning?

JohnMu: If this doesn't hide something in an attempt to deceive users and engines, then this is generally correct .

Can exceeding rel = nofollow or all external communications in nofollow be considered super-optimization and fined? Are there any fines for this?

JohnMu: I wouldn't worry about that. I will try to make the site as natural as possible.

Is there a difference between static and dynamic communication (with?)

No, it isn't.

For images, do you need to use alt and title right away?

Alt is for indexing, title is for your visitors only.

The problem is there is a menu at the end of the page, but at the beginning of the displayed CSS?

No problem.

Is it better to have 5 main categories on the home page or details of all 50 categories?

As long as you have less than 100 links, that's depending on what you think is best for the visitor.

Will the algorithm promote W3C-compliant sites in the future?

No, it isn't. Compatible sites are likely to be more attractive to visitors and have indirect support.
Compatibility with W3C standards is not required and will not be in the future. Moreover, only 5% of sites meet these standards.

Do I need to separate words in the URL dash or undercore?

It doesn't matter anymore.
Until now, the underscore code "_", which is part of the characters that can be used in identifiers in programming languages, was considered an integral part of words. For example site_web one word was visible. The rule will change, underscore is now from splitter and for Google the term site_web is now seen as two separate words - site and web. This allows you to respond to requests on the site and on the Internet.

How important are the "titles"?

They serve as titles in results.

Are file extensions important?

Whether your file ends in .html, .html, .php or .asp, it doesn't matter if Google treats them the same. Only .exe can be skipped!

Are the pages too deep disadvantaged?

The number of slashes "/" is not considered for Google. That would seem to matter to Yahoo and Live, which ignore links that are too deep in subdirectories.

Sitemap

If my site has a lot of pages, for example, Amazon, do I need to include every URL I want to index into an XML file. If not, how do I fill in the XML file?

You can use your sitemap to place all the links there... This is done for this! However, if you have many URLs pointing to the same content, then only your favorite version should be included in sitemap.

In addition to XML sitemap, is it useful to have HTML sitemap on the same site?

JohnMu: HTML sitemap can help search engines. Especially if the XML file is missing. The Webmaster Tools widget 400, which can be placed on the error page, can use the/sitemap.html file or equivalent to help the user find what they are looking for. I also recommend HTML sitemap, but for visitors, not engines.

Is it useful to submit a sitemap if the pages are already indexed?

Using sitemap, you can view added and modified URLs. They can be scanned faster than getting on them by accident.

Can I include an image in sitemap?

Yes, but it's not worth the image on the HTML page.

Communication

Don't you feel that the webmaster should be informed in case of a manual fine and the requirement to reconsider to consider it more seriously in this case?

Caspar ak Guglarz: This is a very good question that we are asked regularly. So imagine having a site where you regularly add original content or tools. If it has been hacked and contains hidden content or links, or if you are the owner and webmaster does not follow the guidelines, then you may be informed by Webmaster Tools. The message will probably contain information about the problem. Once you correct it, your demand for review will be handled with caution.
On the other hand, if you have the same number of sites with restored content on other sites, do not rely on a message from Google.

User behavior

Are rebound speed and speed taken into account when positioning a page? In particular, if an Internet user clicks on the result and immediately returns to select another, does this affect the position of the first?

JohnMu: If users log off the site so quickly, there's a good chance they won't want to recommend it to others (or return to it themselves). So yes, at least indirectly, if the site is created in such a way that we immediately have a chance that we will not repeat it the way users love it (and this is recommended by others).
NDT: The patent clearly states that the algo takes this into account.

Keywords

Many believe that in order to be well located, it is enough to have high-quality backlinks. But how important are the keywords on the site? Whether the density of keywords is important for displaying the page theme. What percentage is offered?

Wysz: Links are used only to place pages. We look at both content on the page and off the page, and what you have on the page is important for positioning. (BAT: obvious!).
However, there is no recommended keyword density. Your content should be of good quality and written for users. If you write for engines, your content may become unnatural, which will ultimately damage you, not help you.

Do I need to put keywords in the URL?

It is useless if they are already on the page.
But this is useful for pages that contain only images.

How is meta name = "keywords" used?

We don't read this meta.

PageRank

Matt says Google considers 200 signals when classifying a request and that PageRank is one of the others. If so, why is it nominated in the Google toolbar? Is it possible that it will be removed from the toolkit?

JohnMu: PageRank is just a signal that we use, but it's also the easiest measure to present to users, and it's easy to see where that measure comes from. Therefore, I think it is useful for users and it is advisable to submit it to the Google Toolbar.

How often do you update the site's PageRank .

Matt Cutts: PageRank is constantly recalculated (different PageRanks every day). Toolbar 3-4 times a year.

Is it important to work on improving PR?

It is better to spend time improving content, its availability and its promotion.

Could there be pages that reduce PR?